Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 449
I handed the list to Mrs. Cheever. “Here,” I said, and I could feel myself getting red, I felt so apologetic. “You and your husband just write down the prices you think would be right. Of course I don’t know how much you’ll feel willing to part with — —”
“That seckatary’s got the original brasses on it, too,” she said.
“Has it?” I asked her. “Well, if you and Mr. Cheever will just sit down here and work through the list, my family and I will step out in the yard and wait while you two do the figuring.”
So that’s what we did. Mrs. Massey and the girls and I went outdoors, and I never did see three women in a greater state of unsuppressed excitement. Enid and Clarissa were so exhilarated they just grabbed each other and began to dance on the brick walk; but Mrs. Massey stopped them for fear the old couple would look out of the window and see them. Then Clarissa got to standing in a kind of trance, staring at the front door and I noticed her and went up to her. “What’s the matter?” I asked her.
“I wish we’d put that in,” she said, in a dreamy sort of way.
“Put what in?”
“The front door.”
I just walked away from her. I strolled around the house and noticed a shed in the back yard, and went in. There were quite a number of wonderful old things in there — mostly broken, though — and with its face against the wall there was one fine old piece that I turned over and looked at; but when I went back to the front yard I didn’t say anything about it. The quaint old couple had just come out of the house, and Mrs. Massey and both girls couldn’t restrain themselves — they made a dash for that list and fairly snatched it out of Mrs. Cheever’s hand. Then they put their three heads together over it, and ten feet away I could hear ’em breathing.
Mr. Cheever was carrying a red-painted cylinder with a bottom to it and a rope handle. “Here,” he said to me. “This is an ancient Revolutionary fire-bucket. I cal’late to make it a present to ye in case ye buy the hull list.”
Well, of course that would have made anybody understand there was something wrong, and the way my family were standing as they looked over the list seemed to have quite a little significance, too. None of them moved a muscle. They just stood and stared; but I could hear them breathing louder. So I went over to them and took the paper out of Mrs. Massey’s hand, and she didn’t resist any or hardly move her fingers as it slid out of them. Just one glance showed me that the Cheevers were certainly willing to sell because they had written a price after every article on the list, and then they had added the whole thing up and set down the total at the bottom.
I didn’t bother much with the individual items, though, as my eye ran down the paper, I noticed that they had marked the high boy eighteen-hundred and fifty-two dollars, and the waterproof chandelier twelve-hundred and sixty-nine dollars. The staircase was cheaper; they only wanted eleven hundred for that, and ninety-one dollars for the old strip of carpet on it. The total at the bottom of the second page interested me a good deal; it was eleven-thousand, eight-hundred and twenty-two dollars and sixty-five cents.
“Yes,” I said to Clarissa, “you could get the front door put in, I expect. I don’t believe they’d make any particular fuss about selling it.”
Well, we didn’t get the present of that Revolutionary red fire-bucket; the two New England characters were carrying it back into the house with ’em as we drove away, and Mrs. Massey and the girls were pretty quiet. They seemed kind of staggered, so I didn’t mention right then what I’d seen in the shed behind the house. I didn’t want to make my family feel any blanker until they’d got used to the shock they’d had. I just said, “I expect you used the right word about Mr. and Mrs. Cheever — I mean about their being a dear old couple.”
Probably I shouldn’t have gone even that far; I might have been wiser if I hadn’t said it, because the three of them stiffened up a little but didn’t look at me, and right away I could see they regarded me as occupying the position of an enemy, you might put it. When members of our opposite sex have been too confident about something and are feeling let-down about it, there’s hardly ever anything at all a man ought to take a chance of saying to them. I saw it was a mistake, so I kept quiet until we got home; then I took Mrs. Massey aside and asked her how many people she thought knew about her wanting to get inside one of those wonderful old houses in the neighborhood.
“Why, nobody,” she said in a cold way, staring at me. “We don’t know anybody.”
“Did this Moses Brazinga at Lodgeport tell you about the Cheever place?”
“Certainly not! We never talked to him about anything except what he had to sell right there in his shop.”
“Well, who did tell you about it?”
“I think it may have been Zebias Flick,” she said.
I went out in the kitchen where Zebias was sitting, talking to Joanna Gillwife. He had his woolen-stockinged feet in the oven of the electric stove; but mainly on account of habit, I expect, because the current was off.
“Listen!” I said to him. “Joanna here tells me that pretty nearly everybody in Mary’s Neck is kin to everybody else, especially yourself. Have you got some cousins named Cheever?”
“Cheever?” he said; then he ruminated a while and took a pin out of his mouth and looked at it. “Cheever,” he said to himself in a low voice, appearing to be puzzled.
“Yes, Cheever!” I said. “Cheever!”
“Well,” he asked me slowly, “where’bouts do they live? Do you mean the Philo Cheevers or the Cheevers at Sloan’s Point or the Cheevers around Nist Hill or some o’ the other Cheevers? I have hear,” he went on, “I have hear they was Cheevers ‘way further on Down East. Mebbe it was them you had a mind to ‘quire ‘bout; but ef you was to ‘peal to me I never see any of them Cheevers and I dun’t know as I’d want to. They might be kin to me, and they mightn’t. I couldn’t give you no inf’mation ‘bout them Cheevers ‘tall.”
“I don’t want any,” I told him. “I just want to know if you’ve got any relatives named Cheever anywhere.”
“Cheever,” he said, and he put his pin back in his mouth. “Cheever.” Then he took it out again and seemed to brighten up a little. “I can tell you where you can git some inf’mation ‘bout the Cheevers. That’s from ole Miss Caroline Willingsworth; she lives back in the country quite a ways but it’d pay you to go up there ef you got a mind to hear ‘bout the Cheevers. She’s got family albums and old dockments and — —” Then he stopped himself with the air of a man who remembers something important, made a regretful sound with his tongue, and let his feet slide down from the oven to the floor. “No, I guess she ain’t, though. She passed away, come to think of it, some little time ago, and I don’t know as anybody’d be able to tell you what become of all her albums and dockments. They must be scattered far and wide, by this time, because she didn’t have anybody to leave ’em to, and mebbe the neighbors got ’em, or then mebbe they didn’t. I wasn’t there so I couldn’t tell you. Mebbe they had an auction — —”
“Listen!” I said, and I guess I was getting kind of mad. “Listen! I simply asked you — —”
But just then he put his pin back in his mouth again and began to roll it around with a sort of far-away expression on his face. I looked at him, and I knew it wasn’t any use in the world.
CHAPTER IV
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 — —”
