Читать книгу The Fighting Littles - Booth Tarkington - Страница 6

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Little, remaining near the open wide doorway of the living-room, heard her light footsteps reach the upper hall; then, as spaces were open and the house was quiet, he unfortunately heard something more—his wife’s voice, apprehensively hushed but all too clearly audible.

“Is he gone, Goody?”

He felt justified in taking it upon himself to reply, more than loudly enough, “I am not, thank you!”

“Oh, dear!” Mrs. Little’s response was the squeak of a snared bird; for in truth she was trapped by her own indiscretion. Unable to return to her bedroom and retain face, she was irresistibly drawn down the stairway to explain herself if possible. She came into the living-room pulling more closely about her the garment of blue rayon she wore over her night dress; but its effect and hers was that of a helpless fluttering. “I only meant——” she began. “I didn’t mean——I only asked Goody——”

“If I’d gone,” her husband said grimly. “So you already knew what happened last night. Did you get up and join the party down here when you heard the dancing?”

“Well, I did get up,” Mrs. Little admitted. “I mean, when I heard them all go out and Goody came up to bed, I went in her room and got her to tell me about it. Don’t you think we ought to be so glad, Ripley, that she wasn’t seriously injured—that none of them were? It really was a miracle! Really, Ripley, we seem to be a pretty lucky family. Don’t you think we all ought to be——”

“Rejoicing?” he asked. “Me in particular, I suppose you mean? No, I don’t. Since you ask me: no, I don’t. Especially after the interview I’ve just had with my daughter, I don’t. In regard to that interview and the general state of this world and this country, I don’t find myself in a rejoicing condition. Do you?”

“Oh, dear!” Mrs. Little sat down flaccidly.

“Up to the time I passed my fortieth year,” her husband said, “I lived a pleasant, quiet life. Up to then I didn’t even know I belonged to a ‘Class’; I thought I was just a citizen. But somebody that’d read books by somebody that’d read foreign books began calling ’most everybody the ‘Great American Middle Class’ because there seems to have been something like that in Europe; and then, pretty soon, we all got put into new Classes to fight each other. Goody’s in the Youth Class, the Female Youth Class that has to fight the Father Class. Away from home I’m not in the Father Class, I’m in the one that got picked on and exploited from the start by all the other Classes, and had to pay for all of ’em, jobjam ’em! Up to when I passed my fortieth year——”

“Now, Ripley, please!” Mrs. Little tried to interrupt him. “Don’t let’s go over all that again and get all worked up and——”

“It used to be a nice world,” he said, “up to when I found out I belonged to the Underprivileged Class, the greedy few millions of businessmen that ought to go broke so as to make everything even at zero. Then when we all are broke, and the country, too, along comes this nice agreeable gentleman, Hitler, with the dear little Japs to back him up and scare the shirt off of everybody in the world that just wants to be let alone to ’tend to his own business—and that’s the very time my own daughter picks to do her jammedest. I tell you from the heart that if it weren’t for Filmer’s being kind of a comfort to me sometimes, I’d be ready to swear we made the mistake of our lives ever having any children at all. I——”

“Now, Ripley, please don’t——”

“Please don’t what, Mrs. Little?” Mrs. Little quivered; whenever he called her “Mrs. Little” she knew that things were bad. “Please don’t what?” he repeated. “Talking to Goody I merely expressed a slight natural human indignation because of the destruction of her face and my car by her disbrained associates and suggested that just possibly a city of this size might afford something superior in the way of companionship; and I was openly jeered at when I mentioned, for instance, young Norman Peel. She——”

“Norman Peel, Ripley?” Mrs. Little said timidly. “I don’t really know him at all well, dear; but I—I don’t think he’s exactly Goody’s—Goody’s type, is he?”

“Wouldn’t that be to his credit?” the embittered father asked, and replied to himself, “If what she’s already picked shows her type, it certainly would. Just compare Norman Peel with her Ham Ellerses and Hot Toddys and Bull Thetfords and the rest of ’em, for instance. There isn’t any comparison!”

“Isn’t there, Ripley?”

“Not a dobdab nickel’s worth!” Little’s irritation was increased by what seemed criticism on the part of both Goody and her mother—criticism of his ability to discern superior worth. In his argument with Goody he’d mentioned Norman Peel almost at random, not being able at a moment’s notice to think of any finer young man; now he found himself, he knew not how, in the position of a champion. Automatically he became crossly enthusiastic in defending his choice. “Just like you and Goody!” he said. “I wouldn’t put it past you both to be against Norman Peel because his spectacles kept him out of the draft. I wouldn’t put it past you to be against him because——”

“But I’m not,” she protested. “I’m not against——”

“You are,” he said. “I can see it. In my opinion, for a boy only a year out of college, and a beginner, Norman Peel’s just about the brightest young businessman downtown. He was in my office yesterday on an errand; he was only there for as much as ten or fifteen minutes but I could tell he knew exactly what he was about. Besides that, he’s got a bright earnest face, he dresses quietly—none of these big checks, no-necktied, slack-panted, wrinkle-socked, loud——”

“Ripley, please don’t get so excited. I don’t doubt Norman Peel’s a good young man; but maybe it might have been a mistake to try to talk him up to Goody just when she felt so hurt about Ham Ellers and the others. She can’t help their all being in love with her, you see, and I’m afraid it was a little hard on her to have you——”

“So you’re at it, too, are you?” her husband asked.

“At it, Ripley? I—I don’t know what you mean. At—at what?”

“Attacking me. It’s the last straw.” He stamped into the hall, took his hat from a table, put it on slammingly. “Well, dobdab!” he said. “I beg you to excuse me. I’m on my way.”

Mrs. Little, slack in her chair, whimpered, “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” as the front door clashed behind him and simultaneously a door opened in the body of the house. Filmer came from the dining-room, entered the living-room and stood before his mother. His expression was serious and perhaps a shade too self-satisfied.

“So it’s the same old story,” he said. “The same old story.” He liked the phrase and himself for using it; so he tried it again. “Mother, why has it always got to be the same old story?”

“What?” she asked. “What old story?”

“I mean,” he explained, “I don’t claim Goody’s a really smart girl; but I don’t see why she can’t exercise a little obedience and intelligence in her dealings with Father, the way he says himself I do. A little while ago, in this very room he told me I’m the only one that has any and does, and I’ve even heard him say so when he didn’t know I did. I don’t see why this same old story has to always go on the same way practically every day. Father’s a perfectly well-meaning man if you know how to handle him. You got to humor him and show you understand him and got a little sympathy, and he’ll be all right. All he asks from this family is a little——”

“Never mind!” His mother, finding his tone intolerable, interrupted him. “I’m afraid your father only praised you because he’s upset with Goody about something, Filmer. I’m afraid you forget there’ve been certain times in the past when he didn’t find you so intelligent and obedient as he believes he thinks you are now. Aren’t you forgetting——”

“Oh, those?” Filmer thus dismissed the times to which she referred. “They were just ippisodes. Listen, Mother; what is it he’s upset with Goody over? Was it anything else except the hullabaloo that went on last night? Listen, Mother, was it——”

“Never mind, please. It’s nothing you have anything to do with. You must realize that in these dreadful days—just look at the newspapers!—we’re all very nervous and when there’s any kind of disturbance at all everybody jumps, especially businessmen, and most of all your poor father.”

“I don’t, Mother. You say everybody jumps. Look at me; I’m as calm as——”

“Then try to stay so,” Mrs. Little said, “and be very considerate because it’s true everybody’s nerves are jumpy. Mine are, for instance, right now, and if you stop to talk any longer, Filmer, you’ll be late to school.”

“Always the same old cry,” he said. “Always the same old cry, ‘You’ll be late to school.’ Whenever anything’s wrong in this family and I so much as dare to ask to use what little brains I got to help——”

“Your ‘little’ brains, Filmer?” His mother, in spite of her depression, was faintly amused. “You mustn’t be so mock-modest, Son. I’m sure you don’t for a minute forget your splendid school record or overhearing Miss Hoapmiller’s telling the Principal you were her brightest pupil.”

He was hurt. “Don’t I ever get to hear the last o’ that? Just because I thought it would please my parents and happened to mention it at home I suppose I got to have it dinned into my ears all the rest o’ my whole life every time I ever——”

“Do go, Filmer!” his mother begged. “I’m sure you’re late already; do go.”

“You seem to forget this is the last day of school,” he said. “Vacation commences tomorrow and being late the last day doesn’t matter a farthing’s whistle. Not a farthing’s whis——”

“Do go, Filmer!”

“Oh, certainly,” he said. “But remember this: it’s the last time. Up to September it’s the last time I can’t be confided in what’s wrong in this family on account of I’ll be late to school. After today that excuse won’t serve. I’ll know all about this business before tomorrow anyway. Good-by, Mother.”

He left her coldly, and, when he returned in the middle of the afternoon, having lunched at school, made good his promise to discover the cause of the morning’s domestic trouble. A long and probing conversation he had with Gentry Poindexter in the empty garage put him in possession of even more facts than had occurred, and he appeared at the dinner table that evening sympathetically ready to be a partisan of his father. Somewhat dampeningly, however, his sister was not present, and Cousin Olita, answering a frowning inquiry of his, explained that Goody had gone out to dine and dance.

“Where?” Ripley Little asked, and set down his soupspoon. “Where?”

“At the Green Valley Country Club,” Mrs. Little replied, looking at her plate.

“With that face? At the Green Valley Club with that face?”

“Gentry told me about her face,” Filmer said. “I went upstairs to look at it; but she had her door locked so I couldn’t, and wouldn’t open it when I asked her. Well, I don’t know I should have done this exactly, Father; but I went around on the roof of the porch to Goody’s window and looked in and she was powdering and lipsticking. She’s got a black eye and adhesive plaster, and her underlip’s about the size of a red Easter egg and——”

“Filmer!” Cousin Olita laughed. “What a story! Don’t exaggerate so.”

“I don’t know,” Little said. “I don’t know that it’s much of an exaggeration, unless her lip’s gone down remarkably since this morning. To me the unbelievable thing is that she’d be willing to exhibit it and her other mutilations before an assembly of people who——”

“Now, Ripley.” Mrs. Little, not looking at him, shook her head slightly. “You really don’t understand girls of Goody’s generation. They love to look like that nowadays in public.”

“Yes,” he said, “I forgot that. They do, jobjam ’em!”

Filmer restrained an impulse. It was to explain to his father that defacements and other injuries sometimes added to the distinction of one’s appearance, offering the suggestion of accidents the result of dash and daring. Appearing on a crutch at a party for instance, Filmer felt, might even imply that one had been doing something pretty fancy with an airplane; and about the next best thing was the look of having got into trouble at eighty miles an hour in a car. The truth was that as Goody hadn’t been actually killed Filmer rather envied her the chance to display her evidences of speed and action. He didn’t say so, however, and, after a short study of the expression upon his father’s broad face, decided to retain by silence the parental esteem in which he complacently knew himself to be held. Filmer’s thought was, “You can’t tell what he’ll do. Most of the time these old people don’t take things the way you’d expect ’em to and it’ll be a lot better for me to not say anything right now but just go on being a comfort to him in his own way whenever he thinks of Goody.”

Filmer maintained this policy all evening. Quiet, sympathetic, he sat near his father in the living-room and was careful to keep the radio down to the barest audibility. When he rose to go up to bed he bade his father goodnight in the gentle tones of one who comprehends everything. He had a success.

“Goodnight, my boy,” Ripley Little said. “Goodnight, my boy.”