“I haven’t decided. My father and I’ve been talking, but I haven’t decided.”
“Well, it isn’t as if you had to go right out and get a job. Your family are comfortable. You’ll wish to make your home in Swedish Haven?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, I’m in favor of that. We’ve always lived here, and I hope David will settle here when he graduates. I want him to study law at my college, Dickinson, and then settle here. Did you ever hear any of your family speak of William L. Lockwood?”
“No sir.”
“Never heard of William L. Lockwood. Well, William L. Lockwood was one of the founders of my college fraternity. Sigma Chi.”
“Is that so?”
“Thomas C. Bell, James P. Caldwell, Daniel W. Cooper, Benjamin P. Runkle, Franklin H. Scobey, Isaac M. Jordan, and William L. Lockwood. They were the founders of Sigma Chi, at Miami University out in Ohio, the year 1855. They were all members of Deke with the exception of Lockwood. I had to memorize all that when I was initiated.”
“Is that so?”
“Be nice if you could trace some connection with William L. Lockwood. That would make you and me fraternity brothers, so to speak. I wish they had Sigma Chi at Princeton. They did have, but then Princeton did away with fraternities. I would have liked David to be a Sigma Chi. Is your father a Mason, George?”
“No sir. He’s a Zeta Psi.”
“Well, you don’t mention the two together.”
“Oh, I thought you mentioned Sigma Chi and the Masons.”
“Not exactly together, though. I guess you did think I was coupling one with the other, so that’s my fault, but that’s neither here nor there. Your Grandfather Hoffner’s a Mason, that I do know.”
“Is he?”
“You didn’t know that, George? Yes, you have very good Masonic connections on your mother’s side. We’ll have to speak about this again sometime. Just now I’m a little worried about David at Princeton. You have these clubs at Princeton, so it isn’t as if I could write to the Sigma Chi chapter, but David’s told me he doesn’t expect to join a club. George, now that you’re coming in the family, I wish you’d have a talk with David, make him see how important it is to mix with people.”
“It’s a ticklish subject, Judge.”
“Ticklish subject? How so?”
“Well, I belong to a club—”
“I know you do. One of the best, I’m told.”
“Thank you. But if I talk to David about the advantages of joining a club, he may get it in his head that I’m trying to get him to join my club.”
“Well, what if he does? I’d be satisfied to have my son and my son-in-law in the same club. If you can’t both be Sigma Chi’s…”
“But I don’t speak for my club, Judge. I don’t decide who gets invited to join. I can blackball somebody, but that doesn’t mean I can invite somebody. You know how these things work.”
“Of course I do. But this club you belong to is only a club, not a secret organization like Sigma Chi, or the Masons. It’s just a club.”
“We have secrets, just the same as if we were Alpha Beta Gamma Delta.”
“Then what David’s been trying to tell me is that you’re not going to invite him. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to join. Do you realize what you’re doing to the boy? Do you realize that three of his friends from Mercersburg are sure to be invited to clubs, and he isn’t?”
“They can’t be sure, his friends. They won’t know till the last minute.”
Judge Fenstermacher tapped his heel on the carpet, ran his fingers around his neck between skin and collar. He got up and walked to the window, then came back and stood before George Lockwood. “Let me hear it from you in plain language. You ask permission to marry my daughter, but you’re doing nothing to help her young brother.”
“Judge, I’ve done all I could to help David.”
“All you could? What have you done? Sat idly by while other young pipsqueaks keep him out of your own club. Do you think any member of my family would ever set foot in such a place after that? Do you think Eulalie would visit your club? Or I? Or Mrs. Fenstermacher?”
“I’m sorry, Judge. I don’t know. I only know that I’ve been trying for nearly a year to get David invited to our club. But I’m not the one that decides. It’s a committee.”
“Damn your committee!”
“He may be invited to join some place else.”
“I don’t want him to join some place else. I want to know whether my prospective son-in-law has any standing with his friends. If not, then I don’t want him for a son-in-law.”
“Well, then I guess that’s that.”
“What do you mean, that’s that?”
“I’ll have to tell Lalie that you’ve turned me down.”
The meeting had taken longer than was expected by Lalie and her mother, who were waiting in the sitting-room, and when George Lockwood joined them their nervously expectant smiles vanished. “What happened?” said Lalie.
“He says to wait? Is that it?” said Mrs. Fenstermacher.
“He thinks I should have got David into my club.”
“Oh, dear me. I was hoping that wouldn’t come up. David understands, but I knew Judge wouldn’t. Oh, dear.”
Lalie went into his outstretched arms. “Don’t cry,” he said. He turned to her mother. “I’m over twenty-one, Mrs. Fenstermacher. You know that. And Lalie will soon be.”
“Yes, but don’t do anything—rash.”
“It won’t be rash,” said George Lockwood. “I can support her. I’m very well off.”
“It isn’t that, George. Let me deal with Judge.”
It was a Sunday. They had all been to church, but they had not yet sat down to the large Sunday dinner that always followed attendance at divine service. Now they heard the judge’s deep voice. “Bessie, come here,” he was calling.
“You two stay here,” said Bessie Fenstermacher.
George Lockwood never knew what was said between the judge and his wife. He sat with Lalie in the sitting-room for fifteen minutes behind the rarely closed doors. They comforted each other with the words and sentences of love, with kisses and tears and the common anger. Then there was a knock on the door, the door was opened, and Bessie Fenstermacher, half-smiling, said to them: “It’s all right. Just say nothing. Pretend like nothing happened. Dinner’s ready.”
“Mama, what did you tell him?” said Lalie.
“I talked to him. Don’t ask me any more questions. Dinner’s ready,” said Bessie Fenstermacher. She rested her hand on George’s arm. “You have sense, George.”
“All right, Mrs. Fenstermacher.”
“He’s a judge, remember. He has to be right, so don’t put him in the wrong. Be polite, like nothing happened.”
“I’ll do my best.”
There were only the four of them for dinner. The judge stood up while carving the roast chicken, which gave him something to do. “George, can I give you light or dark?”
“I like the white,” said George Lockwood.
“I see you have plenty of sweet marjoram in the filling, Bessie,” said the judge. “Maybe George doesn’t like so much sweet marjoram?”
“Yes, I do. I like it.”
“Well, that’s lucky. Lalie, you pass George his plate, please. And George, help yourself to the mashed and sweets. The gravy’s there in front of you. Lalie, you want the second joint?”
The conversation at the beginning was on the topic of food, always a reliable and inexhaustible topic among the Pennsylvania Dutch. The meal consisted of the large mam course and dessert of hot mince pie and ice cream. George and the judge drank coffee with their meal, the women drank water. But though there were only the two courses, the amount of food was prodigious. Meat, candied sweet potatoes, mashed white potatoes, red beets, stewed corn, mashed turnips, creamed onions, and endive in olive oil, with side dishes of cranberries and a slaw. Thought was put away while the two men and two women concentrated on emptying their platters, and conversation never got far from the principal topic, the business at hand. Distracting talk was never encouraged at a Pennsylvania Dutch table, and silences were not embarrassing. (Prattling children would be asked, “Did you come to eat or did you come to gabble?” and it was within the rules for a talky child to lose a piece of pie to a non-talking neighbor. “That’ll teach you not to talk so much,” the parents would say.)