“That question came up three years ago,” the rector said impatiently, “and a report was submitted to the board of trustees on the question. There have been very few requests for it, but if you would like a copy, I will have one sent to you.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Sheridan said, “I would like to read it.”
The rector nodded and Mrs. Sheridan sat down.
“Mrs. Townsend?” the rector asked.
“I have a question about science and religion,” Mrs. Townsend said. “It seems to me that the science faculty stresses science to the detriment of religious sentiment, especially concerning the Creation. It seems to me.”
Mrs. Sheridan picked up her gloves and, smiling politely and saying “Excuse me,” “Thank you,” “Please excuse me,” she brushed past the others in the pew. Mr. Bruce heard her heels on the paved floor of the hall and, by craning his neck, was able to see her. The noise of traffic and of the rain grew louder as she pushed open one of the heavy doors, and faded as the door swung to.
LATE ONE AFTERNOON the following week, Mr. Bruce was called out of a stockholders’ meeting to take a telephone call from his wife. She wanted him to stop at the stable where Katherine took riding lessons and bring her home. It exasperated him to have been called from the meeting to take this message, and when he returned, the meeting itself had fallen into the hands of an old man who had brought with him Robert’s Rules of Order. Business that should have been handled directly and simply dragged, and the meeting ended in a tedious and heated argument. Immediately afterward, he took a taxi up to the Nineties, and went through the tack room of the riding stable into the ring. Katherine and some other girls, wearing hunting bowlers and dark clothes, were riding. The ring was cold and damp, its overhead lights burned whitely, the mirrors along the wall were fogged and streaked with moisture, and the riding mistress spoke to her pupils with an elaborate courteousness. Mr. Bruce watched his daughter. Katherine wore glasses, her face was plain, and her light hair was long and stringy. She was a receptive and obedient girl, and her exposure to St. James’s had begun faintly to show in her face. When the lesson ended, he went back into the tack room. Mrs. Sheridan was there, waiting for her daughters.
“Can I give you a lift home?” Mr. Bruce said.
“You most certainly can,” Mrs. Sheridan said. “We were going to take a bus.”
The children joined them and they all went out and waited for a cab. It was dark.
“I was interested in the question you asked at the parents’ meeting,” Mr. Bruce said. This was untrue. He was not interested in the question, and if Negroes had been enrolled in St. James’s, he would have removed Katherine.
“I’m glad someone was interested,” she said. “The Rector was wild.”
“That’s principally what interested me,” Mr. Bruce said, trying to approach the truth.
A cab came along, and they got into it. He let Mrs. Sheridan off at the door of her apartment house, and watched her walk with her two daughters into the lighted lobby.
MRS. SHERIDAN had forgotten her key and a maid let her in. It was late and she had asked people for dinner. The door to her husband’s room was shut, and she bathed and dressed without seeing him. While she was combing her hair, she heard him go into the living room and turn on the television set. In company, Charles Sheridan always spoke contemptuously of television. “By Jove,” he would say, “I don’t see how anyone can look at that trash. It must be a year since I’ve turned our set on.” Now his wife could hear him laughing uproariously.
She left her room and went down the hall to the dining room to check on everything there. Then she went through the pantry into the kitchen. She sensed trouble as soon as the door closed after her. Helen, the waitress, was sitting at a table near the sink. She had been crying. Anna, the cook, put down the pan she had been washing, to be sure of hearing everything that was said.
“What’s the matter, Helen?” Mrs. Sheridan asked.
“From my pie he took twelif dollars, Mrs. Seridan,” Helen said. She was Austrian.
“What for, Helen?”
“The day I burn myself. You told me to go to the doctor?”
“Yes.”
“For that he took from my pie twelif dollars.”
