waltz.
'You don't act much like a minister,' she said.
'You don't act much like a woman shattered by a broken engagement,' he answered.
'Who said I was 'shattered'?'
'Barbara.'
'Barbara doesn't know.'
'Then you're not shattered?' They picked up the cadence of the waltz again.
“No. I most certainly am not.”
'Then come down to Princeton this weekend. I have the nicest Nash convertible you've ever seen. We can have lunch at my club and if you want we can spend Sunday at the shore.'
'What shore?'
'My family has an oceanfront home in Sea Girt, New Jersey,' he said.
This all sounded terribly familiar. 'And your aunt is normally there, but she may be away this weekend, right?'
'Wrong,' he said. She waited.
'My parents are normally there. But they'll definitely be away this weekend.'
The music stopped and Stephen applauded the band, who rose, bowed, acknowledged the ovation, and began to lay down their instruments for a break. Laura stood with her arms akimbo, assessing Stephen Fowler.
'Well,' he said, looking back at her. 'It's only an invitation. No one's forcing you. And you can think about it.'
'I'd love to go,' is what Laura surprised both of them by saying.
'You're sure?'
'I'm very sure,' she said.
They walked back to the table holding hands and even Barbara Worthington looked askance.
'See, Barbara,' said Stephen. 'Back within ten minutes. No damage done and we never left the room.'
'Uh-huh,' said Barbara, who was scrutinizing her cousin carefully now, as if searching for paw prints.
Stephen Fowler held a chair for Laura and seated her. Then he drew a long sigh and exhaled with too much drama. 'I think I'm in love,' he announced.
'Oh, no-o-o…' Laura, Barbara, and Victor said in unison, and turned their heads away from him in harmlessly overdone contempt. But when Laura turned back to him, it suddenly struck her that, once again, he was not joking. Laura pinched herself and discovered that, yes, this was really happening.
The final touch: the Fowler family of Bala Cynwyd, particularly Stephen, was on Peter Whiteside's far-flung list. Then again, wasn't everyone she met these days? All right, Peter, she thought to herself. This time I will give you a highly detailed report.
*
It was later that evening, when Barbara and Laura returned to their family's cabin, that Barbara filled in a few of the initial biographical notes on Stephen Fowler.
He had been third in his class at Princeton, a spring track star, not football, as Laura had erringly guessed, an extraordinarily gifted captain of the swimming team, treasurer of the Class of 1928, president of the Debating Society, editor of The Princeton Literary Quarterly -- 'He writes well enough to become a professional novelist or essayist,' Barbara insisted as she undressed completely and stepped into the shower -- and had in fact been accepted for theological study at Yale.
'Him?' Laura asked again, watching Barbara through the open door to the bathroom. Laura lay on her bed, wearing only her slip and bra, one shoe off, the other dangling perilously from a toe as she held her leg out straight.
'Him,' confirmed Barbara. 'He's unusual.'
'I know.'
Barbara added the final detail as she washed her hair. The Fowler family was old money from the Main Line. Someone named Amos Fowler, two generations back, had owned the tracks upon which the Reading Railroad had carried its freight. The Fowlers were millionaires more times over than anyone could count.
'And with all his fortune,' Laura asked, 'he's chosen to become a minister?'
'Honey,' answered Barbara, rinsing off, 'with his money, he can afford to become a minister.'
Laura grew very quiet. Barbara finished her shower, draped a robe over her shoulders, and toweled off. Then, sensing Laura's mood, Barbara continued in cautious tones.
'I should tell you, I suppose. Stephen's had quite a few girlfriends in his time. Girls from good families, I mean. Girls who don't normally go to bed with men.'
'I'm sure,' Laura said.
'So you like him?'
Laura returned Barbara's knowing gaze. 'He asked me to go away with him next weekend. To Princeton and then to Sea Girt. Can you imagine that? I barely know him.'
'And?'
Laura mused upon it. 'I might need a new dress or two,' she said. 'And I definitely need a new bathing suit.'
At twenty-three, Laura Worthington was daring, and wise enough to know exactly how to conduct the whirlwind love affair that she now sensed before her. Only, it became more than a whirlwind. Soon after the weekend in Princeton and Sea Girt, Laura knew she was onto the real thing. She was indeed, as she liked to phrase it, “a goner.”
*
Laura wrote a final letter to Edward Shawcross. She felt she owed him that much. In it, she actually said little, only that she would always recall him with kindness no matter how he felt about her. She mentioned that she had met someone new but she spared him the details. She was certain, she wrote, that he would soon find a younger, prettier, altogether better girl than she had been. In no time they would be operating his dreamed-of inn in Bath, complete with household 'staff of five.' When she sealed the letter, she felt both saddened and relieved.
Then Laura drew another piece of stationery. For the first time, she wrote to Peter Whiteside and revealed the depth of her involvement with Stephen. Always before, she had discreetly mingled word about him into the news of other people she knew at Contontic. And yet Whiteside must have sensed something.
'More about this wonderful young man,' he had written back once. 'What about the divinity student?' Whiteside had asked on another occasion after Laura had purged any mention of her romance from her correspondence.
What did Whiteside know about love between a young man and a younger woman?
Laura thought huffily. This is none of his business.
'What about the young Fowler fellow?' Peter had written a third time.
So now she told him everything. If he did not like it, she concluded, he could bloody well find another pen pal. She mailed this letter at the same time as the note to Edward and enjoyed a robust sense of accomplishment.
A response from Peter Whiteside came back like a yo-yo.
'Laura,' he wrote. 'You are very young and very impressionable. I daresay you've had only one other serious romance. Are you certain that this is in your best interests?”
She read the letter twice and took it to be smug and condescending. She crumpled and burned it. Then Laura burned the rest of Peter Whiteside's letters. She felt free of him. Emancipated. But she continued to simmer.
At length, she penned one final correspondence to him, complete with a tone which she took to be the match of his.
'In response to your question,' she wrote, 'am I certain this is in my best interests?
My response, sir, is yes. Very definitely. Laura.'
Then she cut off communication with Peter Whiteside. Completely.
Laura Worthington and Stephen Dobbs Fowler were married on August 28, 1937, by the Reverend Adrian McFarlane at the Lawrenceville chapel. Dr. Nigel Worthington came from England for the occasion, was a houseguest of the Fowlers in Bala Cynwyd, and was more than suitably impressed with both Stephen and his family. For their part, Stephen's parents were absolutely enraptured by the noble English physician and his mild
