It was broadmindedness now that compelled her to welcome Mrs. Holland briskly and cordially, ignoring Mrs. Holland’s slightly clouded glance and the cigarette stain on the hand she extended. Ruth’s father had rung up about tea, so it was quite in order to let Ruth go; still, Mrs. Holland was a family friend, not a parent — a distinction that carried its own procedure. It meant that she need not be received in the private sitting room and given cake but must wait in the office. It meant that Ruth was not to go alone but must be accompanied by a classmate. Waved into the office, Mrs. Holland sat down once more. She propped her umbrella against her chair, offered the headmistress a cigarette. The umbrella slid and fell with a clatter. The cigarette was refused. Reaching for her umbrella, Mrs. Holland tipped her case upside down, and cigarettes rolled everywhere. The headmistress, smiling, helped collect them, marvelling at the variety of experience inherent in teaching, at the personal tolerance that permitted her contact with a woman of Mrs. Holland’s sort.
“My hair’s all undone, too,” said Mrs. Holland, wretchedly, clutching her properties. And, really, watching her, one felt she had too much for any one woman to handle — purse, umbrella, and gloves.
The headmistress retrieved the last cigarette and furtively dropped it in the wastebasket. “With all this rain, one can hardly cope with one’s hair,” she said, almost as cordially as if Mrs. Holland were a parent. Resolved to be lenient, she remembered that Ruth’s father’s money did, after all, lend the situation a certain amount of social decency. The headmistress had heard, soon after her arrival, this wayward story of divorce and confusion — Ruth’s parents divorced; Ruth’s mother, who had behaved badly, gone abroad; the sudden emergence of Mrs. Holland — and she had decided that Ruth ought to be watched. There might be tendencies — what someone less broadminded might have called bad blood. But Ruth was a placid girl, to all appearances — plump, lazy, rather Latin in looks, with glossy blue-black hair, which she brushed into drooping ringlets. In spite of the laziness, one could detect a nascent sense of leadership; she was quite bossy, in fact. The headmistress was satisfied; like the school, the imitation abbey, Ruth was almost the real thing.
Summoned, Ruth came in her own good time. Conversation between the two women had frozen, and they turned to the door with relief. Ruth was trailing not one friend but two, May Watson and Helen McDonnell. The three girls stood, berets on their heads, carrying raincoats. Their long black legs looked more absurd than ever. They shook hands with Mrs. Holland, mumbling courteously. For some reason, they gave the appearance of glowering, rather like the portraits in the hall.
“What time do we have to be back, please?” said Ruth.
“I expect Mrs. Holland will want to bring you back soon after tea,” said the headmistress. She made a nervous movement toward Mrs. Holland, who, however, was collecting her belongings without difficulty. The girls were being taken to the tearoom of a department store, Mrs. Holland said. “I am pleased,” said the headmistress, too enthusiastically. The girls glanced at her with suspicion. But her pleasure was authentic; she had feared that they might be going to Ruth’s house, where Mrs. Holland, the family friend, might seem too much at home. Mrs. Holland pressed on the headmistress a warm, frantic farewell and followed the girls out. It had begun to rain again, the slow warm rain of June. Mrs. Holland, distracted, stopped to admire the Tudor-Gothic façade of the school, feeling that this was expected, and was recalled by the fidgeting of her charges. There was more fumbling, this time for car keys, and, at last, they were settled — Ruth in front, as a matter of course (the car was her father’s), and Helen and May in back.
“Out of jail,” said Ruth, pulling off her beret and shaking out her hair.
“Is it jail, dear? Do you hate it?” said Mrs. Holland. She drove carefully away from the curb, mindful of her responsibilities. “Would you rather —”
“Oh, Ruth,” Helen protested, from the back. “You don’t mean it.”
“Jail,” said Ruth, but without much interest. She groped in the side pocket on the door and said, “I left a chocolate bar here last time I was out. Who ate it?”
“Perhaps your father,” said Mrs. Holland, wishing Helen had not interrupted that most promising lead about hating school.
“He hates chocolate. You know that. He’d be the last person to eat it. But honestly,” she said, placid again, “just listen to me. As if it even mattered.”
Situations like this were Mrs. Holland’s undoing. The absence of the chocolate bar, Ruth’s young, averted profile, made her feel anxious and guilty. The young, to her, were exigent, full of mystery, to be wooed and placated. “Shall we stop somewhere and get another chocolate bar?” she said. “Would you like that?”
It was terrible to see a grown woman so on the defensive, made uneasy by someone like Ruth. Helen McDonnell, taller than the others, blond, ill at ease, repeated her eternal prayer that she might never grow up and be made unhappy. As far as she knew, there were no happy adults, other than teachers. She looked at May, to see if she had noticed and if she minded, but May had turned away and was staring at her pale, freckled reflection in the window, thrown back from the dark of the rainy streets. She knew that May was grieving for an identical face, that of her twin, who this year had been sent to another school, across the continent. Driving through thicket suburbs and into town now, they passed May’s house, a white house set back on a lawn.
“There’s your house, May,” Ruth said, twisting around on the front seat. “How come you’re a boarder when you are right near?”
“How about you?” said May, angrily.
Ruth twisted a curl and said, “Haven’t got a mother at home, that’s why.”
“Would you like to live at home?” said Mrs. Holland eagerly, and Ruth stiffened. Oh, if only she could teach herself not to be so spontaneous! Instead of drawing the child toward her, she drove her away.
“It’s much better to board,” said Helen, before Ruth could reply. “I mean, you learn more, and they make you a lady.”
“Don’t be so stupid,” said Ruth, and May said, “Who cares about that?”
Helen, reminded that these two would grow up ladies in any case, colored. But then, she thought, seeing the three of us together, no one could tell. They wore the same uniform, and who was to guess that Ruth’s father was rich and May’s clever? As long as she had the uniform, everything was all right. Pious, Helen repeated another prayer — that God might miraculously give her different parents.
Furious with Helen for having again interrupted, Mrs. Holland clamped and relaxed her gloved hands on the wheel. Traffic lights came at her through a blur of rain. If only she and Ruth were alone. If only Ruth, with the candor Ruth’s father was so proud of, would turn to her and say, “Are you and Daddy getting married?” Then Mrs. Holland might say, “That depends on you, dear. You see, your father feels, and I quite agree …” Or if Ruth were hostile, openly hating her, if it were a question of winning her confidence, of replacing the mother, of being a sister, a companion, a friend … But the girl was closed, indifferent. She seemed unable to grasp the importance of Mrs. Holland in her father’s life. There was an innocence, a lack of prudence, in her references to the situation; she said things that made shame and caution fill Mrs. Holland’s heart. She was able to remark, casually, to Helen and May, “My father and Mrs. Holland drove all the way to California in this car,” reducing the trip (undertaken with many doubts, with fear, with a feeling that hotel clerks were looking through and through her) to a simple, unimportant outing involving two elderly people, long past love.