Читать книгу White Banners - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 9

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IT was the hottest summer anybody could recall. In the country the corn parched in its husks, the wheat curled up and gladly died. Little was left stirring in the whole Mid-West but raucous political clamour and an unprecedented pest of grasshoppers.

The only comfortable place in the house was the basement. Marcia had said she wished she, too, could think of something important to do down there, and Paul had absently replied that there was plenty to be done, all right, if she had anything constructive to suggest. But he had not specified the nature of his dilemma or confided the objective of his relentless labour. Had the Wards been penniless they might have contrived to borrow enough money to rent a cottage at some near-by lake, as they had always done in the days of their heart-breaking insolvency. Now that they were for the first time in their married life (thanks to Hannah) out of the wood financially, it seemed imprudent to incur this unnecessary expense.

Their other reason for remaining in town during the summer vacation was Paul's intense application to his new project. He was inventing something again—something that was under construction in the basement, where he toiled for the greater part of every day with a zeal at once amazing and pathetic, for it was absurd to hope that a professor of English Literature could accomplish very much with a plumber's wrench. Even he, serious as he was over it, had ventured a little joke about the novelty of converting the lamp of learning into an acetylene torch.

Paul Ward had matured perceptibly in the past six months. It was a new and comforting sensation to be free of bill-collectors. The nervous flicker of the parasitical smile that had ineffectually draped his chagrin and foreboding was no longer in evidence. And when he had occasion to answer the telephone, you would have thought him another person than the half-frightened, half-furtive apologizer and time-beggar who had abased himself before the raw impudence of brassy whippersnappers in the credit departments of the stores and the utilities.

"Oh, yes—well—I'll be taking care of that on the tenth of the month," he had been accustomed to saying, deferentially.

"Tenth of what month? That's what we want to know. And let me tell you sumpin more!—" And then the surly dunner would tell him "sumpin more", while the sensitive, tortured fellow ground his teeth in helpless humiliation. That was all over now and Paul was showing the effects of his emancipation.

Whatever satisfaction Hannah had experienced in her successful management of the household's business affairs, her greatest happiness was derived from the splendid flowering of Paul's disencumbered personality. Of course she enjoyed watching the beautiful Marcia's achievement of radiance and poise, but the more spectacular change had occurred in the spirit of Paul. Hannah had grown to like him with an honest affection so disarmingly forthright in its protectiveness that Marcia, observing it, was moved rather to gratitude than jealousy. It delighted Hannah to see the gradual straightening of Paul's broad shoulders which gave him the effect of added height, the new pick-up to his words that had disposed of the old indecisive drawl. She had been amused a little, too, over his boyish glee in discovering how much more value there was in the same old dollar, now that his credit had been restored.

"We are always two months behind in our rent," she had said in March. "This time you can pay up one of them. First of May we will take up the other. Then we are going to ask Mr Chalmers for fresh wallpaper in the bedroom, repairs on the front steps, and a complete overhauling of the furnace."

When, in May, they were on an even keel, Mr Chalmers came in breezily one afternoon to have them go through the usual formalities of renewing their lease. Hannah was invited to participate in the interview. We need some repairs, she said. The front steps were falling down. The upstairs rooms required new paper. The furnace was wasteful and must have a heavier fire-pot and new grates. But Mr Chalmers drew a long face. He was barely paying his way on this property. If he made these repairs, he would have to increase the rent.

"But," said Hannah, "aren't you making a pretty good thing out of this investment? At least twelve per cent, I should say."

Mr Chalmers was amazed. He even chuckled a little over the utter ludicrousness of Hannah's remark. The property was worth thirteen thousand dollars! And there were the frightful taxes!

"You people who rent don't realize," spluttered Mr Chalmers.

"Let's be calm, please," said Hannah gently. "I looked it all up in the tax reports. This house is assessed at fifty-eight hundred dollars. I know what taxes you pay." Having serenely dropped this bomb, she excused herself and returned to the kitchen. Paul following her shortly after.

"Hannah," he whispered, with a childish concern that made her laugh, "what did you run away for?"

"I thought we'd better let that soak in for a minute or two before we rub on any more. It's a pretty tough hide, but we don't want to raise a blister. You go back and tell him we're moving on the last day of August."

"But suppose he consents to the improvements."

"Well—even at that, let's tell him there's no hurry about renewing. And if he says he has another family anxious to take it—which is, of course, the first thing he will think of to use as a club—you tell him to go ahead and let the other people have it."

"But what if he should let someone else take the house? We can't move now, Hannah. I've some very important experiments to do here." He lowered his voice impressively. "You don't know just how important it is."

"That's true, I don't. I've often wondered. Maybe you have, too. This will be a good way to find out. If it happens that we are to stay, we can be encouraged to hope that—"

"If I were that superstitious, I'd—"

Hannah shook her head.

"It isn't superstition. It's just trying the thing a little to see how much it weighs. If it's too flimsy to stand a simple test like this, maybe you'd better not spend any more time on it. You go back and tell Mr Chalmers we're moving out."

Paul hesitated, then a light came into his eyes.

"Hannah," he said solemnly, "you have forgotten your pet theory. We mustn't argue, or quarrel, or haggle, or go to battle with anyone—including, of course, Mr Chalmers."

"Well—we're not fighting, in this case. We're just retreating."

Paul returned to the living-room where Mr Chalmers had the new lease spread out on the table.

"Right there, Professor." Mr Chalmers handed him the pen. "And I'll be running along."

"We're not renewing the lease, Mr Chalmers. You can't afford to make the improvements, and we can't afford a higher rent. So—we will be moving, end of August."

Mr Chalmers was astounded, wounded, admonitory. They would have trouble finding another place. Houses were scarce. It was always expensive to move. But Professor Ward gently mumbled that this would be their own look-out.

"Now, see here," entreated Mr Chalmers, "let's go over this matter again. I certainly don't want you fine people to be put to a lot of inconvenience. Just what is it that you've got to have?"

"I'll call Hannah," said Paul, somewhat to Mr Chalmers' dismay.

The lease was signed half an hour later. Hannah had suggested that the specifications for improvements should be drawn up and signed too; the front steps, the furnace, the wallpaper, a new porcelain sink, repair of the hot-water machine, kalsomining in the kitchen, and new screens upstairs.

"But I see no reason for a signed statement," objected Mr Chalmers. "I keep my word."

"So do we," said Hannah, "but you wanted us to sign your lease."

Mr Chalmers boisterously disdained the thought that he wasn't trusting them. "Just a formal matter," he declared with a gesture that made a very small thing of it. "Simply for purposes of—of record." But he complied with Hannah's wish for a memorandum of all he was to do for them. At the front door he tarried, and, jerking a fat thumb over his shoulder towards the general direction of the disappearing Hannah, he growled, "Who is that lady?"

Paul grinned amiably and replied, "That's Hannah."

"Relative?"

"No—the maid."

"Do you let your maid attend to your business?"

"Yes. Does it fairly well, don't you think?"

"I'll say," muttered Mr Chalmers. "She's a-wasting herself doin' housework."

They both chuckled a little, and Paul went back to his work, pausing in the kitchen to say, "You got more out of that chap than you had planned on, didn't you?"

"No," said Hannah. "If you don't raise your voice and holler or put on a big bluster, but just sit tight and wait, you usually come out on top of the heap. If you simply refuse to fight, you get what's coming to you, maybe not right away, but in time. Once in a while it's hard to do, but you'll find it pays. Here we were refused the wallpaper and the new steps and the furnace, and we admitted we were licked. After that we got it all handed to us, plus the hot-water thing, the kitchen paint, the screens, and the new sink. The sink I really hadn't counted on, Mr Ward," she confided. "I shouldn't have been much disappointed if that hadn't come through."

"But, Hannah," accused Paul, with mock piety, "you always trust everyone, and you made poor Mr Chalmers sign a paper. How could you?"

"Oh—that!" She busied herself for a moment with the bread she was kneading, rolling it furiously. "Well—you see, we had caught Mr Chalmers cheating, and it wouldn't be a bit kind to him to encourage him to do it again."

"Yes, I see that," laughed Paul. "You just wanted to protect him against doing himself a bad turn."

"Yes, sir," agreed Hannah, diving again into her dough—"something like that... and we really did need the new sink," she added, half to herself, as if she might be entertaining some lingering misgivings on the subject.

"I'll do as you say hereafter," promised Paul, amused by her frustration. "You're always right—really, you are."

She straightened, with both fists deep in the dough, and facing him squarely, said, "I ought to make you sign a paper too. 'Hannah is always right.'" Her lips were significantly tight, after she had delivered this challenge, though there was a companionable twinkle in her eyes.

He knew what she meant. They had had several brisk arguments recently. About the rug, for instance. It had suddenly occurred to him that the living-room rug was shabby. Without consulting Marcia's taste or Hannah's budget, he had dropped in at a department store and bought an atrociously ugly magenta rug.

"If you don't mind my saying so," Hannah had remarked, "you'd be a happier man if you didn't have these buying spells. That rug! First one you saw, I expect. You should have had Mrs Ward along."

"I'll not buy anything more, Hannah," he had promised. But he did. It wasn't a week before he had appeared in a new grey suit, despite Hannah's injunctions that there mustn't be any further spending that month.

Privately Hannah forgave him for getting the new clothes. They had set back his clock five years. There was also a new red tie and a grey felt hat. He was stunning. So was the bill.

Hannah didn't want to scold, but they were such an improvident pair. Mrs Ward never bought anything for herself, but she was for ever making suggestions for unnecessary expenditure on the table.

"Hannah"—a typical remark—"we've had breast of lamb three times in the past two weeks. I'm afraid Mr Ward will tire of it."

"Sorry," said Hannah. I'll have a pot roast to-morrow."

"How about a steak?"

"We'll have to wait, Mrs Ward, until we get squared away. We're running a little behind, this month."