Читать книгу The Fighting Littles - Booth Tarkington - Страница 5

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Her violently yellow, scarlet, green and black modernist pajamas were not unbecoming; but her facial extreme beauty was marred by a swollen underlip and a discoloration under her right eye; two strips of adhesive plaster, moreover, were crossed upon her right cheek. “Did I hear it!” she cried. “Now I know how you speak to my most intimate friends when I’m not there to protect them! You may be my father; but——”

“That will do! We’ll go into this in a moment.” Little turned from her to his son. “Filmer, have you finished your breakfast?”

“No, sir. I was just getting into it when I thought I’d better come out in the hall and see what——”

“Very well,” Little said. “I don’t pretend that I’m not glad to have one intelligent and obedient child left, Filmer; but I think now you’d better go back into the dining-room and close the door and finish your breakfast.”

“Yes, sir.” Filmer, reluctant but flattered, proved that he was obedient, and, after the dining-room door had been heard to close, Ripley Little addressed his daughter, trying to use a quiet and reasonable voice. She stood before him defiant, breathing fast.

“Now let’s have it,” he said. “What’s the matter with your face?”

“Nothing’s the matter with it! Nothing to speak of. I merely——”

“Merely!” her father echoed. “Merely? You call that merely? I’m beginning to have strange ideas. Those gilded hoodlums that just tried to break in here at breakfast-time were practically in ruins, and I’m beginning to believe that a police car actually did drive up to our front door last night. I——”

“They’re not!” the daughter interrupted hotly. “What right have you to call my most intimate friends hoodlums?”

“They are!” The father’s temper, already wrecked within, began to operate his voice. “Bandaged gilded young hoodlums, and I’m not going to have them breaking in here day and night, calling a daughter of mine ‘Plunks’ and——”

“What’s the matter with ‘Plunks’?” she asked bitterly. “Is it my fault you named me ‘Gudrida’? Mother told me she didn’t have a thing to do with it; you were bound to christen me ‘Gudrida’. I hate being called ‘Goody’ or ‘Drida’ and there aren’t any lovelier boys in this whole world than Ham Ellers and Bull Thetford and Ruggo Smart and Hot Toddy. You——”

“Look at your face!” Ripley Little said, all reasonableness gone. “Just look at it, I ask you! How’d you get it?”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you. If you’ll ever stop raving long enough to let me——”

“All right. I’ve stopped. So go ahead. If anybody’s doing any raving in this room it certainly isn’t I. It’s difficult to restrain myself sometimes; but——”

“I thought you said you’d stopped.” Then, as her father only looked at her over a heaving chest, Goody spoke as rapidly as she possibly could. “It all amounts to nothing at all except the boys had to come early today on account of having to see me right away about something very important.”

“ ‘Important’? Of all creatures living on this distracted earth the four least likely to have anything important in their heads——”

“Go it!” Goody said. “I thought you claimed you’d stopped and wanted to listen. I’m glad, though, you don’t think it’s important about your car because——”

“My car!” Little started. “My car?”

“You weren’t using it, nobody was; the other one was in Crappio’s and we didn’t have any,” Goody explained, with an air of strained patience. It was as if she strove to reach the mind of a backward child. “Mother and Cousin Olita both practically the same as said we could because Ruggo’s sister had sneaked his car out on him, poor Ham’s got smashed by that truck last week, and Bull and Hot haven’t got any. So we definitely didn’t have any other way to get to the Rosy Showboat. We——”

“It’s coming,” her father said. “Now I’m beginning to get it. Rosy Showboat! You had to get to the Rosy Showboat. Of course! The whole jobjam world would have been upset and Hitler’d have been sitting right in the White House if you and Ham Ellers and Bull Thetford and Ruggo Smart and Hot Toddy hadn’t got to the Rosy Showboat. So you deliberately took my car—and later there was a police car——”

“Police car? Ridiculous!” Goody interrupted. “It wasn’t anything of the kind. I suppose you heard the siren and——”

“Heard it? Who in this whole town didn’t hear it? It came screeching up the street and then the phonograph started and a herd of buffaloes——”

“Oh, I knew what a fuss you’d make if it woke you up,” Goody said. “What’s the use? Entirely on account of your forever going into a frenzy over my staying out a few minutes late, I insisted on coming straight home from the hospital where they took us first, and the boys naturally came with me in the ambulance—an ambulance isn’t a police car, is it?—and before we went out to the icebox the nice intern that came along with us may have been a little high and he was the one that turned on the phonograph, and the dancing didn’t last over half a minute because I knew if it woke you up you’d be like this in the morning and——”

“Ambulance,” Ripley Little said indistinctly. “Hospital first, then ambulance. What happened to your face and my car?”

“That’s what the boys wanted to see me about this morning,” Goody said. “The man in the other car was definitely beside himself. He claimed he could prove that Ruggo was driving with his head swiveled round to speak to Ham Ellers and Bull and me on the back seat when it happened.”

“When what happened?” Little’s voice was more indistinct. “When what happened?”

“Why, when the man’s car hit us,” Goody replied, as if to the most foolish of all his questions. “What else could I mean? So naturally the boys were anxious to find out the first thing this morning if I’d found out if you had any collision insurance on your car because maybe——”

“Job jam!” Ripley Little said. “Jam! Job jam the helm! Jam the——”

“Oh, all right!” Goody seemed at the end of her patience. “All right if you have to take it that way. Why can’t you be sensible? We all did everything we possibly could. Even while they were fixing us up at the hospital and we still didn’t know whether we were alive or dead, we telephoned Crappio to send the wrecking-crew for your car. I’m sorry if you’re inconvenienced, Father; but I think for you to speak to just about my dearest friends in the insulting and outrageous way you used when they came here as they did this morning just to try to be helpful and——”

She would have continued; but her father clapped his hands together, making a sound that assisted his facial expression to stop her. “Compared to what I was seven or eight years ago,” he said, “I’m a poor man; but I still command funds enough to hire guards if necessary to prevent any of those four car-smashers from setting foot on my premises again day or night. Out of the whole of this community for your constant associates you select the freshest, uselessest, recklessest——”

“I do not!” Goody protested. “They are not, and anyway they select me. Definitely! They definitely——”

“Will you stop!” Little shouted. “Whenever I attempt to exert the slightest authority you try to ‘definitely’ me deaf. Definitely, definitely, definitely! I’m so sick of that job jammed word I——”

“Why all the noise?” his daughter inquired. “I’m simply trying to tell you I’m sorry for what happened to your car and discover if you have any collision insurance; but why try while you’re definitely beside yourself? If you have any further reason for detaining me from my breakfast, kindly state it. It’s getting cold on a tray upstairs and I’d definitely like to return to it.”

“Go up and eat it!” the furious father said. “While you’re consuming it, swallow this down, too: not one of those swing-crazed speed vandals ever sets a crippled foot on my property again. Definitely!”

“Indeed?” Goody, who had decisively moved toward the door, swung about haughtily. “What’s your objection to them?”

“What’s my——”

“Certainly! What’s your objection to them?”

“Well, I’m dobdabbed!” Little said. Then, conscious that desperation availed him nothing, he once more tried to be reasonable. Compelling himself, he made his voice appealing, as if from man to man. “See here, Goody, let’s just try to look at this thing sensibly. If you’ve got to go places the whole jab time as it seems we can’t stop you from doing, why can’t you anyhow pick out somebody more intelligent, or at least safer, to go with? There certainly are some young people in this town with anyhow a little common sense and good manners and human caution. Why can’t you find at least one young man or boy that has some steadiness and sense and modesty and industry and——”

“Who?” Goody asked, and, stepping toward him, permitted herself to utter a slight peal of jeering laughter. “You have somebody in mind, Father? Whom do you suggest?”

“Why—why, anybody except those,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking of anyone in particular. I only mean somebody superior to those——”

“Well, mention one,” Goody returned. “You say there’s such a lot. Can’t you mention just one? Who?”

“Why—why——” Little goadedly searched through a limited gallery of ill-remembered young faces and in haste selected one with an earnest expression and spectacles. “Why, young Norman Peel, for instance.”

“Norman Peel? Did you say Norman Peel, Father?”

“Certainly I did. Norman Peel. Why not Norman Peel? He’s—he’s——”

“He’s what?” Goody repeated her injurious laughter. “You don’t know any more about Norman Peel than a whale does about cats. Are your orders that I’m to be Norman Peel’s sole escort from now on?”

“I merely mentioned him,” Little responded, struggling with his voice. “I mentioned Norman Peel as merely one example of the better sort of young men of this community.”

“You agree with Norman, then,” Goody said. “Have you ever seen much of him, Father?”

“I see him from time to time, certainly. He’s shown energy enough to go into business and I’ve heard his employers speak of him as industrious. In a way I’ve had my eye on him for some time and——”

“Oh, you have your eye on him, have you, Father? As a son-in-law?”

“As a young businessman I’d be glad to see in my own employ,” Little said, and, sorely aware that Goody had him far off the subject of her defacements, his injured car and those responsible for both, he added sternly, “As a young man I’d be glad to see in my house because he doesn’t come bursting into it held together with splints and calling my bandaged daughter ‘Plunks’! As a young man who doesn’t send me from my home on foot after maltreating my daughter’s face, inflicting losses on insurance companies and——”

“Oh, then, you have got the insurance!” Goody cried. “Thank heaven the boys won’t feel they have to ask their fathers to——”

“That’s all that concerns you, is it?” Little said fiercely. “That’s all you——”

“I said I was sorry, didn’t I? How many times do I have to——”

“Don’t exert yourself; once is enough,” Little said. “ ‘Sorry’ pays all the bills, puts my car at the door for me and fixes your face all up again! Young people nowadays burn your house down, then just say ‘Sorry!’ and——”

“Sorry!” Goody interrupted. “My breakfast’s waiting.” She returned spiritedly to the doorway, stopped and looked over her shoulder. “What do you know about ‘young people nowadays’? How could you know anything about ’em when you’re always in such a state? Maybe it isn’t tactful to mention it; but in my own quiet circle you’re rather well known as the terrible-tempered Mr. Little.”

“I?” he cried unwarily. “That’s absolute slander. How often does anybody ever hear me speak in anger? Twice a year at the most. I——”

“Twice is right,” Goody said. “Six months each time.”

Upon that, she took advantage of his inability to respond promptly, and departed; but half way up the stairs she paused to call downward, “Norman Peel? Houp-la!” Then she resumed her swift ascent.