Читать книгу Mary's Neck - Booth Tarkington - Страница 8

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IDON’T like to go into the details of the next few days. I’ll only state roughly that I had to be the one that insisted on buying the house, and that by the end of a week we owned it and carpenters were tearing up the living-room before extending it thirty-five feet out into the yard. The family were letting me get this done and looking at me now and then as if I were still a good deal of a trial to them; but sometimes they’d forget and break out with expressions denoting excitement and pleasure, then perhaps notice that I was around and restrain themselves suddenly. Mrs. Massey naturally got back on a customary footing with me sooner than our daughters did; she said as long as the carpenters were here anyway they might as well enlarge the butler’s-pantry and put up a new lattice around the laundry yard, and do a few other little things, though of course, as she’d told me, her principal interest in owning the place was the garden she could have. There are a couple of acres of ground behind the cottage; she’d dreamed all her life of having a New England garden, she said, and now she was going to do it. I told her to go ahead, thinking it would look well in me to give her this permission because she was already going ahead anyhow without asking for it.

I anticipated she might have a little trouble finding a gardener. I’ve mentioned how this Zebias Flick kind of came with the cottage when we rented it; our owning it didn’t seem to make any difference with him, and he appeared to have established his own line of duties. He kept the grass cut and weeds out of the gravelled walk and driveway—to some extent—and was supposed to look after the ashes and do a little window washing and so forth. I was pretty sure Zebias wouldn’t care to add gardening to the other duties he performed, not at any price; but Mrs. Massey said it wouldn’t do any harm to ask him. So she did. He just ate a couple of spears of grass and said he’d been thinking of laying off work entirely for the summer in order to rest himself. Even after two or three weeks of acquaintanceship, Zebias didn’t talk much—at least not with any person his mind connected with summer—and the other original inhabitants of Mary’s Neck were the same. Eternal vigilance still seemed to be their watchword, especially whenever I made any sickly effort to get chatty with them, and when I did find the one exception, it first startled me and then turned out to be a disappointment.

This exception was the gardener Zebias found for Mrs. Massey. She didn’t know where to look for one, herself, so after quite a little pressure on her part Zebias said he wasn’t sure that he didn’t know somebody who’d be willing to give the position a try, if he was a mind to, and the next morning the person he’d induced to consent to make the trial began work in the back yard under Mrs. Massey’s direction.

She’d already had about half an acre ploughed up and fertilized by a farmer Zebias had hired for her, and also she had on hand two or three truck-loads of young plants from greenhouses over at Lodgeport, besides a gallon or so of seeds from mail-order houses. You see, she was going at the thing in earnest, and from where I was sitting by an open window in my own room upstairs, trying to read—because the carpenters were tearing out partitions pretty noisily below—I could hear how brisk and interested her voice was sounding down there in the yard. I could hear another voice, too, a high-pitched one that struck me as about the nasalest and twangiest I’d ever heard in my life, and it seemed to be going on most of the time and usually in a surprised kind of a way.

“Hee-uh?” it would say, and I’d already heard that expression often enough in these parts to know it’s meant for the word “here”. “Hee-uh? You mean you want them little bushes lugged right hee-uh? Well, if ’twas me I wouldn’t do it,” I could hear this funny, twangy voice saying. “Hee-uh? You want them seeds stuck in hee-uh? Well, if they was mine I wouldn’t do it. What I’d do with this gaddin if ’twas mine, I’d plant me ’bout eight nice, good rows o’ potatoes and the rest I’d put into nice, good tunnips and cabbages, somethin’ you’d git pleasure out of later on. Course though it’s yours and you know what you want. ’Tain’t my respons’bil’ty, so I’ll take and do what you say. If you tell me to I’ll do it; but if ’twas me I wouldn’t. You mean you want ’em hee-uh?”

I could hear Mrs. Massey telling him yes she did, and sometimes she seemed to be calling the new gardener by his name; but it struck me she said it in a lowered voice as if there was something peculiar about it or she didn’t like to come right out with it, so to speak. Our daughters must have been listening a little, too, because they referred to this critically at lunch, which was rather an open-air meal, as you might say, on account of the carpenters having torn off the bay-window of the dining-room, that morning, to get its architecture more harmonious with the extension of the living-room. Mrs. Massey didn’t mind that; she was flushed and warm with her gardening in the sunshine, and appeared to be pleased with the way things were going, though the girls’ criticism embarrassed her slightly.

“What on earth were you calling that man, Mother?” Clarissa asked her. “It sounded too silly!”

“Why, no,” Mrs. Massey said. “It was just his name. It’s an odd name, just as many of the names about here are, especially in the country-side, away from the village. He comes from a little settlement two or three miles from Mary’s Neck and he seems a very good man indeed, though he hasn’t had much experience with flowers, I’m afraid. Zebias says that he’s the best to be had and that he’s entirely reliable and honest, and I get that impression myself; besides, it’s rather pleasant to find one of ’em who’s talkative and affable.”

“Altogether perfectly equipped as a gardener!” Enid remarked, with a touch of sarcasm, you might infer. “We were speaking of his name and we’d better learn what it is since we may have occasion to use it ourselves some time. Just what was it you were calling him, Mother?”

“Prinsh,” Mrs. Massey told her, and looked a little disturbed. “When he told me his full name I thought that was the best thing to call him. It’s his middle name.”

“It sounded perfectly horrible!” Clarissa said, and she took a severe tone with her mother. “I heard you calling him that, and I couldn’t believe my ears. I heard you saying, ‘Where’s the rake, Prinsh?’ and calling ‘Oh, Prinsh!’ when he was in the tool-house, and ‘Prinsh’ this and ‘Prinsh’ that, and I did hope the carpenters weren’t listening because it sounded as though his name were ‘Prince’ and you were tight and couldn’t speak distinctly. Just imagine their hearing you calling him that when they come! It won’t do, Mother.”

“Well, it’s better than anything else,” Mrs. Massey said, getting redder, and naturally both girls demanded to know what she meant by that. “I mean better than his other names,” she explained. “When he came this morning the first thing he said was that he was the man Zebias Flick had hired for the summer to do gardening here, and then he said, ‘I’m Mr. Sweetmus.’ ”

“What!” both the girls exclaimed together.

“Mr. Sweetmus,” their mother told them. “I didn’t think of it right away; but the first time I called him that without the ‘Mister’——”

“I heard you!” Clarissa interrupted. “I’d have thought you were looking for one of us, or even for Father, except it was so unlike your ordinary vocabulary. How often did you call this man ‘Sweetmus’ and who heard you?”

“Never mind,” Mrs. Massey told her. “I saw at once it wouldn’t do because it’s so difficult to distinguish between the sounds of ‘M’ and ‘N’ at a little distance. So I asked him what the rest of his name was, and he said he didn’t like to be called by his first name, though it was a Bible name. There are two Ananiases in the Bible and when his family named him they meant the other one; but strangers never understood that, and it had been a burden to him at times. I thought he was right, too; it would be unjust to call him by a name he objected to, and then he told me that his middle name was Prinsh, which was his mother’s family name. So I thought the simplest thing to do was to call him that, though after I’d done so a few times I—ah——”

“Rather!” Clarissa said. “There’s only one thing to do and that’s to go back to the way he introduced himself, which is certainly what he wanted. Joanna Gillwife says the most tactful summer people and those the inhabitants like the best use the word ‘Mister’ pretty frequently in addressing the original Mary’s Neckers in their employ. He called himself ‘Mr. Sweetmus’; as you say, you can’t possibly call him ‘Ananias’, and unless you want people to think you’ve been drinking you can’t go all over the place shouting, ‘Oh, Prinsh!’ any more. If we put in the ‘Mister’, there isn’t much danger of people’s thinking we’ve gone crazy enough to call a person who looks like your new gardener ‘sweetness’! I do wish, though, that one or two of Father’s old friends in Logansville could have heard him calling him that, just once!”

“Never mind,” I told her. “We’ll call him ‘Mr. Sweetmus’, of course; it’s settled.”

“I hope so,” Enid said, getting up. “He’s certainly a sight!”

This word of description interested me, for I hadn’t been able to get a clear view of Mr. Sweetmus from my window; so, after lunch, I went out to look him over. He was a fat middle-aged man—pretty bald, because you could see a half-moon between his hair and his old straw hat—and the upper rim of his greenish old trousers didn’t look as if it was going to stay much longer on the lower slopes of his gingham shirt that was bulging out above it. He had a shiny brown face, puffed cheeks, and eyebrows that looked like the leavings of a pair of caterpillars that had died halfway up his forehead. He appeared right glad to see me.

“Guess you must be Mr. Massish,” he said, stopping work and holding out his hand. “Pleased to make your ’quaintance.” I shook hands with him and told him that my name was Massey; but information on this point had no weight with him, then or at any other time. “Nice place you got here, Mr. Massish,” he went on. “Mrs. Massish, she seems a nice lady, too, I expect, once I git used to her, maybe. Well, breeze sou’west but looks like holdin’ fair. Too early to say so now, bein’ it’s only May, but looks like, come September, we might git a good, nice Indian Fall. What I mean by that, it’s the season after summer. Guess you might ’a’ heard the spression used somewuz, maybe?”

“You mean Indian Summer?” I asked him.

“Yes—and no,” he answered. “By that I mean if you ast me I’d haf to answer, ‘Yes and no.’ Seems like I’d heard the spression used somewuz one way and somewuz else another way. That’s the way things are, Mr. Massish; you go one place and they’ll tell you one thing, then you take and go another place and they’ll tell you different. Another thing I was thinkin’ ’bout ’fore you come out hee-uh, it was them mosquitoes. They ain’t come yet and when they do fust come they ain’t got the gimp they git later on. Early in June some years I’ve had ’em to kind o’ settle on me nigh all over wherever I was kind of exposed; but they wouldn’t take a-holt like what they do when they git gimped up more. When they’re young, like that, they bite but they dun’t eat. Mrs. Massish tells me she paid high fer this fertilizer; but it looks kind o’ dried out to me, like most o’ the goodness was gone out of it. Once the goodness gits gone out o’ fertilizer, why, the best you can say fer it is it ain’t hardly got no goodness left in it. Course that’s only the way it looks to me; I dun’t say it mightn’t look different to somebody else. All a man can do is jest spress his own ’pinion, and then you go and take and ast somebody else and they’ll spress another—it may be the same or it may be different. You can’t tell till you take and find out. How do you feel ’bout that, Mr. Massish, yourself? You ’gree with me?”

By this time he’d got me a little confused; I wasn’t just sure what he meant. “Well——” I said; but he didn’t seem to hear me and began talking again before I could go on.

“It’s a good deal like you say,” he said. “Some people look at a matter the right way and they take and spress their ’pinions same as I would, myself, or maybe the way you would, yourself, Mr. Massish, if you was a mind to—or take Mrs. Massish herself and you might say the same thing ’plied to her or to your two daughters. Zebias Flick told me you had two, and the woman in the kitchen, I ast her and she says they was two, so I guess Zebias must ’a’ had the rights o’ the matter.” Mr. Sweetmus had been leaning upon the handle of a hoe as he talked; but now he appeared to get reflective and rubbed the rounded end of the hoe-handle up and down against his nose as if to polish both. “Well, it’s funny,” he went on. “It’s funny but childern always kind o’ take to me. Animals and childern and women. Take to me soon as ever they lay eyes on me, and always did. Must be somethin’ ’bout me they like. Funny, but that’s the way it always is. B’en that way long as I can ’member; even when I b’en among strangers they’ll leave other people and come around me—animals and childern and women. Funny, but that’s the way it’s always b’en.” He scratched his head, leaned again on the handle of the hoe and went back to a previous topic. “Yessuh, breeze sou’west but good, nice weather and it may be too early to say so but looks like four five months from now we might git a nice, good Indian Fall, though’s I says, some might p’fer to use some other spression in speakin’ o’ that time o’ the year. It’s like you said, Mr. Massish; you go one place and people’ll spress one ’pinion and then you take and go some other place and they’ll tell you different. Yet on the other hand you can take and look at it this way: if you stayed in the same place all the time it might be jest the same way, some spressin’ one ’pinion and some tellin’ you different; and yet how could you tell unless you set about to find out? You ’gree with me, Mr. Massish?”

This time I said “Yes” quickly, and added right away that I had an appointment and would have to be moving on. He seemed to regret the breaking off of the conversation; in fact he prolonged his own part in it—raising his voice to reassure me that the breeze was sou’west but that we had good, nice weather and might expect a good, nice Indian Fall—until I had passed around the corner of the house, out of his sight and hearing. Well, of course I could see that at last I’d found somebody I could talk to, or anyhow listen to, whenever I cared for the pleasure; but my conversation with Mr. Sweetmus didn’t lighten my pressure at all. That’s the way it is pretty often when we get hold of something we’ve been looking forward to a good while; it seems to fill the bill pretty seldom. Mr. Sweetmus’s thoughts struck me as going around in a circle; they confused me and I found myself unable to be clear as to their drift.

I had the same experience with him the next morning when I happened to be in his part of the yard again. He stopped work and began to talk before I was within fifty feet of him, and didn’t quit until I went into the house. Listening to him gave me a peculiar sensation; he seemed to mean something by what he said; but most of the time I couldn’t tell what it was, and it gave me a feeling like listening to a foreigner speaking half in English and half in his own language. Mrs. Massey said his conversation made much the same impression on her. Unless she kept him pretty busy, she said, he’d talk continuously and in a way that made her a little dizzy—partly on account of his peculiar voice—and when she was working in the garden she’d found that the best way to handle him was to pretend she didn’t hear him except when he asked questions about the work. Even that didn’t always stop him, she said; he’d call out something about the weather from one end of the garden to the other, and if a cat crossed the yard, or they’d hear a rooster crowing somewhere, he’d be reminded of how animals and children and women always took to him and tell her about it. One morning while I was shaving I heard Zebias Flick talking with him, down in the yard below.

“Guess you’ve often took note of it, yourself, Zebias,” Mr. Sweetmus was saying. “I mean how animals and childern and women always like to make over me. Take these two daughters o’ Mrs. Massish and Mr. Massish, too. You see them two talkin’ to me yestiddy aftanoon? Guess you did. Know what they was sayin’ to me? Well, I’ll tell you: said right out they’d b’en thinkin’ ’bout my ’pearance. I told ’em that jest seein’ me in my gaddnin clo’es, they couldn’t tell; but some Sunday I’d walk up this way in the golf suit Mr. Carmichael’s wife didn’t like him in last year so she gave it to me, and they could jedge for theirselves. So they says no they liked to look out o’ the window sometimes, and sometimes when they was out on the premises they liked to look down towards the gaddin, maybe, and they’d ’joy theirselves better if I was fixed up all the time. Says they’d like to see me in good, nice overalls, the kind that fasten up over the shoulders. Come right out with it and said they thought I’d look nice in long, blue overalls. See? Funny, but that’s the way it’s always b’en.”

“They ain’t the only ones,” I heard Zebias Flick telling him. “Yestiddy I see three four fine handsome womenfolks—automobile tourists they was, top-notch high-heelers—and they was lookin’ over the hedge at you while you was at work; but you never took note of ’em. Ast me who in the world you was, and I told ’em. ‘My!’ they says. Heard ’em say it two three times. ‘My!’ they kep’ sayin’. ‘My!’ ”

“Did they so? Well, it’s funny,” Mr. Sweetmus told him.

“That wun’t all,” Zebias went on. “Heard ’em sayin’ they wondered where you c’d a-come from. Heard ’em say it right out. Same as sayin’ they’d liked to know where you lived, so they c’d make your ’quaintance. I never told ’em though; thought I’d said enough.”

“Well, they wouldn’t ’a’ b’en no harm in your tellin’ ’em,” I heard Mr. Sweetmus say. “Guess they’ll be by again, though, likely. Funny how it keeps on always the same way. Why do you think it is, Zebias?”

“Must be somethin’ ’bout you,” Zebias told him. “Somethin’ that ’tracts ’em.”

“Must be,” Mr. Sweetmus agreed, and there was a short silence as if he were doing some hard thinking. “One reason that might help to ’count fer it,” he said, after that, “why, it’s likely because I never put on no airs with ’em. Always easy and natural-like. They might be other reasons; but that’s one of ’em anyways. Naturalness always come natural to me, as you might want to put it. In other words, I’m always jest myself with ’em, same as I am with you or with somebody’s dog or if I was anywuz else. You take note o’ me, Zebias, when I’m with animals or childern or women, and you’ll see. I’m behavin’ jest as natural’s if I was speakin’ man-to-man. Yessuh, that’s part o’ the reason they make over me the way they do. ’Counts fer part of it anyways.”