Читать книгу Mary's Neck - Booth Tarkington - Страница 7

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AT the dinner-table, that evening, I didn’t get a chance to make any mistake about being still in disfavor on account of my unwise remark about the Cheevers being a “dear” old couple, and I knew by experience I was going to be held in that state until the family got over their disappointment. Likely enough it’s the same way with other families: I expect they split up temporarily pretty often, with one sex on one side and the other on the other, and it’s my personal belief that up to this present date, A. D., my own sex never won—not when the complete results were examined. One of the things that makes me doubt my sex’s intelligence in such matters is that the same experience over and over doesn’t teach us how to save ourselves from being pushed into the opposition, as it were. We make some little careless remark on the wrong subject, or at a poor time to say anything, and right away the ladies establish us as hostile. When we see ’em doing this we ought to have sense enough to withdraw from their sight, or anyhow to become as unnoticeable as possible; but our natural impulses nearly always make us do otherwise.

We get ruffled inside, and, what’s most damaging to us, we never remember that when the ladies put us in conflict with them, they regard us as their enemies on all subjects, not just the one that started the trouble. A man may think he’s winning an argument with his daughter about socialism and right in the middle of it find he’s trying to defend himself to her for something inexcusable he said to his aunt when he was fourteen years old and got his bad conduct into the family records. The truth is we don’t know how to look out for ourselves at all, and that’s something I made the big mistake of forgetting, the evening after we’d been to the Cheevers’. Like a fool, I congratulated myself upon having something up my sleeve that would put the family in their place whenever I chose to bring it out, and I thought that just about the right time for this was after we’d left the table and got settled in the living-room for the evening.

Mrs. Massey was sewing by the fireplace, and Enid and Clarissa were teaching each other to play backgammon from a set of rules, because they said backgammon was “coming in” and they ought to familiarize themselves with it. “We’ve simply got to be good players,” Clarissa said, “before they get here.”

“We certainly must,” Enid told her. “It’s a good thing we came when we did and are getting so well established in certain ways before they come.”

I was sitting by a lamp over on the other side of the room, reading some reports from the Logansville gas-plant; but I noticed what they said and thought I’d begin and lead up to the little triumph for myself I contemplated having. “ ‘Before they come’,” I said, and chuckled to show I was good-naturedly making a little fun of the girls. “ ‘Before they come! Before they get here’! They, they, they! Seems to me we’re hearing quite a good deal lately about ‘they’. ‘Before they come’!”

Both girls stopped playing backgammon right away, and Mrs. Massey let her work sink down in her lap and turned and looked at me. “Yes?” Enid said, not addressing me as if I were her father, “Before they come. What is your objection?”

“Why, none,” I said. “Why should there be? I only meant——”

“Yes?” Clarissa cut in, speaking even less as if I were any relation to her than Enid did. “What, please, did you mean?”

“Why, nothing,” I told her, and I knew I was getting sort of red. So I decided to show them right there the full extent of the mistake they’d made about the Cheevers. “I just thought Enid was right about getting so well established ‘before they come’. I suppose she means getting acquainted around the neighborhood, for instance, the way we did to-day with the dear old couple.”

Enid and Clarissa looked away from me and at each other, both pretty stony. “He will have his joke,” Enid said. “Usually the same one.”

“Yes,” Clarissa told her. “Over and over.”

I laughed again, to show them I was still entirely good-natured, though I could hear, myself, that the sound I made wasn’t just right for the purpose. “Did any of you notice anything,” I asked them, “over that front door Clarissa wanted to buy? I expect you didn’t; but I did. There was an oblong space up there on the wall where the paint was of a little different color from the rest. Did any of you notice it and think what it might signify?”

“No,” Mrs. Massey said, in a rebuffing way, and then spoke gently. “Go on with your game, children.”

“Well, I did,” I said. “I noticed that oblong space, and, being just a man with an ordinary sort of mind, I thought it had to mean something. So I browsed around till I found what must have been in that space until lately. It was out in their wood-shed, facing the wall; but I turned it over and looked at it. It was a signboard, and I got to wondering if maybe somebody hadn’t heard how much you all wanted to see the inside of one of these quaint old houses. It struck me that something or other must have had something to do with their taking this signboard down, because it had ‘Brazinga and Cheever, Antiques’ painted on it.”

Then I laughed again, because now I felt this news would put them in their place, so to speak. I thought I’d come out of the little contest pretty well, and that in their hearts they’d understand it was really a good thing for the head of the family, so to speak, to be their superior in practical matters. Of course what I’d told them must have been quite a blow; but they didn’t show it. They didn’t say anything; their expressions just got more reserved, and then Mrs. Massey began to sew again and the girls went on with their game. I thought it better to pick up my reading again, and so I did, now and then making a sound like chuckling to get myself back to normal with.

Pretty soon Clarissa said something to Enid, in a way that showed she was making an objection to me. No man alive could put that into it; but Clarissa did and plenty of women can. All she said was, “Stuffy, this room, isn’t it?”

“Dreadful!” Enid told her. “It’s because it’s too small for the size of the house. That’s the only objection I’d have to our owning the place. Still, if we bought it, we could tear out that wall and build the room out to any dimensions we wanted it.”

“Certainly we could,” Clarissa said. “The property runs out over two hundred feet on this side. If we hired a contractor that knows his business he could get it done before they come.”

It was just the way I’m describing;—without saying a word more than this, they made it appear to be my fault that the living-room was stuffy and too small for the size of the house they’d persuaded me to rent for them. As a matter of fact, the living-room wasn’t stuffy at all—but there was more in what they were doing than just putting me back in my place, a great deal more! And I went right on from one mistake to another. “Here!” I said. “If you two expect to be helpmeets for a couple of poor fellows some day, you ought to learn to be more practical. A living-room built two hundred feet out into a yard might lack some in coziness, I expect; but in the first place you can’t tear walls out of a rented house because the owner——”

But Enid got up and stood looking at me with her eyes so wide open they scared me. “Did you hear me say ‘If we bought it’? Did you hear me say ‘If we owned it’?”

“Well, Enid, I——”

“No!” she said. “I don’t think I’d try to explain if I were you. When a father’s so anxious to be critical of his daughter that he utterly disregards the truth and deliberately misquotes her, I think it’s about time——”

But she didn’t go any further with it; she put her hand over her mouth in a tragic kind of way, as if her duty made her do it to keep her from stating more and worse facts about me, and then she gave a gasp and hurried out of the room. Clarissa swallowed so that I could hear it, and went right out, too, and for a minute Mrs. Massey seemed as if she intended to do the same, but decided to sit looking at me, instead.

“Why, good heavens!” I told her. “Aren’t they old enough yet to see when I’m only in fun?”

“Don’t you think,” she asked me;—“don’t you think it seemed a little uncalled-for?”

“I should say I do think so! They hadn’t any business in the world to take what I——”

“No,” she said, “I meant you. I meant your critical attitude toward them. I think you could be more tactful, especially at a time like this when you must see how nervous they are about the impression we’ll make on the other summer people when they come. If you weren’t a man you’d see they’re getting more anxious about that every day and how much they worry about what’ll be our position here. Joanna Gillwife says in a place like this everything depends on how a new family starts out, and as a mother I’d naturally like to see my daughters have every possible advantage we could afford to give them. Joanna says that families who already know other families here can rent cottages and be just as much sought after as if they owned them; but for a new family, in particular, renting certainly doesn’t make the very best impression. The girls can’t help feeling what we’re depriving them of. They’ve been very sweet—they’ve hardly even spoken of it and have been careful not so much as to hint at it to you, for fear of upsetting you; but of course they know that it’s a handicap, and I do think, when they’re so self-sacrificingly considerate of you, that for you to criticize them and attack them——”

“Look here!” I said, and I put down the gas works’ report, “What on earth are you talking about? I didn’t——”

But she stopped me. “Didn’t Enid really prove that you’d deliberately misquoted her?”

“But only in fun. I——”

“No,” Mrs. Massey said. “Not entirely, I’m afraid. Not under the circumstances. If we had given them all the advantages we can afford, when they’re so nervous, and if we did own the house, and then you talked like that, they might have thought you were only joking; but, knowing that we don’t own it, they can hardly be expected to think——”

“Look here!” I said, “You don’t mean to tell me that their feelings wouldn’t have been hurt by what I said if we’d happened to own this house? What dif——”

She shook her head, looking sad. “Of course it would make the greatest difference. We’ve all fallen in love with the place, especially if we did enlarge this room a little, and, as Clarissa said, that could be done very easily before they come. I wrote Mr. Avery and he said the owner’s lost practically everything and is so anxious for ready money he’d just give the place away for a song. Mr. Avery said the deed could be ready in a couple of days, and the price—simply ridiculous for what the place is worth——”

“My soul!” I said. “You don’t mean to sit there and tell me you propose——”

“Simply as an investment it’d be worth twice what we’d give for it,” she told me. “Mr. Avery said he’d send up a contractor about the living-room from Boston, himself, and a decorator, too, for that matter. Mr. Avery said he’d take charge of the whole transaction and put it right through, though of course I’ve been merely considering it with him and haven’t told him anything definite yet. The thing that made what you did to the girls this evening so painfully tactless was that being a man you didn’t see how disappointed they are over not getting those antiques this afternoon. They’d really set their hearts on them—and yet, after all, I think it’s a good thing we didn’t get them because it saves all that money in case we do buy the house. I don’t mean we ought to think of it for my own sake, of course, though I don’t deny I’d like to begin a garden here. I suppose Zebias Flick wouldn’t do for that, and we’d have to hire another——”

“Listen!” I said, and I was putting myself more and more at a disadvantage because I was getting flustered. It made me dizzy. Here, right when I thought I was trying to explain how I hadn’t meant to hurt the girls’ feelings, I found I was arguing against buying the property, something I had never dreamed of doing. Somehow she’d made it seem as if Clarissa and Enid had a right to be hurt with practically anything I said, so long as we didn’t own the cottage, and that I owed it to them to buy it to make up for what I’d done, and also that I was depriving them of their rightful advantages by merely paying rent. “Listen!” I told her. “I’m a business man. Suppose we bought this place and then decided we didn’t want to come back next year and——”

“We could rent it. Easily! Mr. Avery says——”

“I don’t like him,” I told her. “I don’t know anything about him except he’s an agent. I don’t want to hear any more about him, either. I won’t do it!”

She gathered up her work and stood up, dignified. “Oh, if you’re beginning to take that tone!”

“Why, dammit,” I said, “I want to give my daughters all the advantages they can have; but when it comes to buying a house simply because this Joanna Gillwife told ’em——”

“Please lower your voice,” Mrs. Massey said, and she went to the door. “If you’re going to swear and quote the servants at me, I think perhaps I’d better leave you to yourself.”

“Listen!” I said, just about bawling at her. “If you think I’m going to be forced into buying——”

“That will do,” she told me. “We’ll never speak of it again.”

So she went out, too.