Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 461
One little boy standing in front of me, with his hands behind his back, said “Yes, sir” in a respectful tone that I didn’t altogether enjoy.
I knew him; it was little Paulie Timberlake, only nine years old. I’d often seen him at the beach but never liked his eye, because whenever he happened to look at me he seemed to be saying quietly to himself, “Now what could I do to this old slob that would entertain me?”
He had that expression pretty strong on him when he said “Yes, sir”; but he didn’t say anything more just then, and none of the others said anything. Some of them walked quietly over toward the reading-room, and the rest began to troop out to different parts of the building. There was one cluster of boys near the door that opened into a little hall leading to the billiard-room, and I was just going to tell them that they must keep away from that room and the new billiard-table, when an ice-water soaked ball of newspaper, coming from that direction, flattened itself upon the steward’s forehead just behind me.
The room was empty of children before he had time to wipe his face; then he smiled in that wan sort of way he had, and said, “It was Master Paulie again, I believe, sir. He seems to be quite a sure shot.”
Then he began to clean the place up. There were dozens of stuffed paper cups all over everywhere; a spindle-legged sofa was broken; one of the pianos appeared to have a good deal of ice-water in it, and altogether the rioting seemed to have been severe. As for me, being Chairman of the House Committee, and having acquired the sense of proprietorship that I’ve spoken of, I couldn’t help feeling personally outraged, especially by Paulie Timberlake. I knew he’d been the ringleader and I had a pretty indignant suspicion that he had a reason for holding his hands behind him when he said “Yes, sir” to me, and also that the last ball of soaked newspaper had not been intended for the steward.
“I shall ask the club secretary to send a notice to Mr. and Mrs. Timberlake,” I said. “I’ll instruct him to inform them that if they can’t regulate the conduct of their child he will be suspended from the club upon the slightest repetition of this offense.”
But the steward shook his head. “I’m afraid not, sir; Mr. Allstover wouldn’t send it. You see, sir, the club used to try but found it couldn’t single out any child in that manner because it merely infuriated the child’s parents, and, when it sent notices to all the parents, it roused just that much more feeling against us, sir.”
I was beginning to tell him that I didn’t care how influential the Timberlakes were, I’d insist on that note being sent, when a sound like thunder broke out in the direction of the billiard-room; and a young man in the club uniform came in, looking kind of resigned. He was supposed to have charge of the billiard-room but didn’t seem to be enjoying his position.
“I knew it wouldn’t be any use to try and keep ’em out of there,” he told the steward and me. “Not after the new billiard-table got here. Now they’ve got me locked out o’ there — told me somebody had lost a dollar on the floor of the hall — so when I came back, they had both doors bolted on the inside. They’re using the butts of the cues to see who can knock the balls hardest and make them bounce over the cushions onto the floor. It was the little Timberlake boy that thought it up.”
I took those two men with me, went to the door of the billiard-room and demanded that it be opened instantly. The noise going on inside was something that can’t be expressed; but I made those boys understand that it was the Chairman of the House Committee who wanted in. I knew they understood because, over everything else, there was a squealing voice anybody could recognize as Paulie Timberlake’s. “Chapmin o’ the House Committer! Chapmin o’ the House Committer!” he kept squealing over and over; but that’s all the attention any of ’em paid to me, and we had to go round outside and jimmy one of the windows open with an ice-pick before we could get into that room. The boys scurried out, of course, as we climbed in, and by that time another riot was occurring in the reading-room.
I don’t need to go into more details; anybody knows what a whole passel of children will do once they get into that mood and loose in a big place like the Rocky Meadow Club. The employees were pretty nearly distracted, and, as for me, I began to feel that life wouldn’t be the same again until I could actually get my hands on Paulie Timberlake. Of course I knew it wouldn’t do to have the kind of interview with him I yearned for, and that made the yearning worse. I tried to call his father on the telephone; but he wasn’t home, and I had to talk to Mrs. Timberlake instead. Of course she said she was sorry Paulie was cutting-up a little with the other boys; but you could see what she really felt was irritation with myself. She wanted to know if I’d called up the other children’s mothers, and, when I said I hadn’t, told me pretty tartly she thought I’d better have spoken to them first as most of the other boys and girls were older, while her Paulie was only nine.
“It seems rather peculiar to single out as small a child as that to get so excited about!” she said. So all the satisfaction I got was making myself madder.
The turmoil went on the whole day all over the clubhouse wherever I didn’t happen to be at the moment. Old Mr. Francis and Mrs. Hapburn were the grown-up people who spent most of their time at the club and they were the only adult members who came in. Mr. Francis told the steward that if I didn’t resign he would, and Mrs. Hapburn hardly let me alone a minute, she lodged so many complaints. Once when she was talking to me in a pretty cross voice, and I was answering her in the same sort of way, only more so, we started to sit down together on a sofa in the reading-room; but didn’t, because somebody hiding behind the sofa reached around and put a sheet of fly-paper there for us to sit on. He scurried out in such a jiffy that we couldn’t have sworn who it was; but I knew.
It was a two days’ Northeaster inside and outside the clubhouse, and the children enjoyed themselves maybe more than at any other time since Christmas. Paulie and his friends were perfectly respectful in manner whenever I overtook them and got them face to face with me, and if I asked little Paulie, for instance, “Did you do this?” or, “Did you do that?” he’d look kind of grieved, and answer, “Why, Mr. Massey!” as if all upset to see me so misled.
Then a few minutes later, if I happened to be passing near one of the stairways, or standing out on the terrace under a window, there’d be an explosion behind me, maybe, where four or five electric-light bulbs would be dropped together from upstairs, and I’d jump about three feet and hear a tinny voice squealing, “Chapmin o’ the House Committer! Chapmin o’ the House Committer!”
By the end of that storm I was thinking almost exclusively of little Paulie Timberlake, and he must have had me in his thoughts a good deal, too, even after the weather cleared, because I heard something that made me judge so at our own dinner-table. It began with my family’s dragging old Mr. Francis into the conversation again, but got around to Paulie pretty soon. It was like this: Clarissa said everybody was talking about what a wonderful old gentleman that old nuisance of a Mr. Francis was, and she’d heard him say the most amusing thing she’d ever heard in her life, that very afternoon. So of course her mother asked her what it was.
“Why it was about Father,” Clarissa told her in a whispering voice, as though pretending to keep me from hearing. “That dear old Mr. Francis was so cute; he was perfectly furious. ‘Massey?’ I heard him saying to the steward. ‘Massey! Massey! Who on earth’s Massey? I’ve been coming here sixty-one years and never heard of any Massey!’ Then I heard the steward mumbling something, and Mr. Francis broke out again: ‘What! New this year?’ Then I heard him say, almost yelling: ‘What! Illinois? Good God!’ ”
“See here!” I said, and I felt so indignant I brought my closed hand down pretty hard on the table. “We’ll have no such language in this house, if you please! If that’s what you’re learning by coming East, we’ll think twice before leaving home another year!”
My remarks didn’t seem to take at all. Clarissa and Enid just began to whisper together and laugh kind of surreptitiously in a way that I felt was almost open rebellion, because what amused them went on seeming to be something about myself. I told them that they spent too much time giggling generally. “It’s a habit I don’t like to see,” I said. “It’s time you began to display a little more dignity!”
“You mean like you, Father?” Enid asked me; and then both of the girls and their mother burst out laughing. I considered this pretty offensive and I told them so.
“But you couldn’t blame us, Father,” Enid went on to say;— “not if you’d been there to-day and had seen what Clarissa and I saw.”
“Been where?” I asked her. “Been where?”
“Behind the dressing-rooms at the club pool,” she told me. “Clarissa and some of the boys and I heard a funny kind of screeching around there and went to see what it was. That clever little Paulie Timberlake was strutting up and down before a lot of the other children, clapping his hands together and with his stomach ‘way out in front of him. ‘Chapmin o’ the House Committer! Chapmin o’ the House Committer!’ he kept squealing, and the other children were all just howling. To tell the truth, we did, too; we nearly died! He certainly is a bright little child!”
“He is, is he?” I said; and I guess I must have been pretty red, because I could feel my collar nearly burning me. “Why didn’t you come into the clubhouse and report it to me? I was there, and you knew I was! I’m Chairman of the House Committee of that club, and it’s my business to support the authority of — —”
I didn’t get any further because Mrs. Massey and the girls began laughing so loudly I could hardly hope to drown them out. I waited till they had quieted down; then I told Enid what I thought of her lack of respect. I was annoyed and I went on talking, getting more and more severe, until Mrs. Massey looked serious and said she thought I’d gone about far enough. “I haven’t said half of what I’m going to,” I told her pretty sharply. “Girls of this generation don’t show any respect for anything; but I don’t intend to let my daughters be brought-up in that way. I’ll teach them to show some respect, or else they’ll look elsewhere for their monthly allowances!”
I suppose it was unfortunate that I said this in such a tone of voice, because Enid took advantage of it. She deliberately burst out crying as if her heart would break and got up and left the room. What made it worse, Mrs. Massey put her fork down on her plate, looked at me, then got up and followed Enid; but made a remark on her way out, seeing fit to add another unpleasant expression to one she had used before. “You’ve got so pompous and irritable lately I don’t wonder the poor girls feel they can barely manage to live with you!”
So Clarissa and I were left to finish that meal alone. I went on eating kind of doggedly, though I knew I was in too wrathy a condition for good digestion, and, just before Clarissa got up, she didn’t make me any calmer. She gave a kind of gurgle, the way people do when they remember something funny. “Everybody says Paulie Timberlake is just a natural born little leader,” she told me. “He certainly has the most phenomenal powers of mimicry I ever saw in a child.”
This last she added when she was already in the next room, and, as she went on out of hearing right away, I was thrown back on brooding upon what I would have liked to do to little Paulie. Even in my own home, which had always, or pretty usually, at least, been a happy and loving one, that child, it seemed, could produce discord. Well, sir, it could hardly be believed that a man of mature age could concentrate as hard as I did on the troubles a nine-year-old boy was making for him. It’s actually a fact that when I was trying to fall asleep that night I kept having pictures in my mind, half dreamy-like, of myself getting little Paulie to eat big sour pickles and a box of soft sweet chocolate together, and I saw myself watching what happened after that with a kind of relieved pleasant feeling in my chest. No, sir, if I hadn’t gone through it myself, I couldn’t have believed it possible that a business man in middle life could get worked up to feeling that way about a bright-eyed little boy nine years old.
When I woke up, I found I had an idea that struck me as such a splendid and satisfying solution I wondered I hadn’t thought of it before. I’d make a rule and post it up in the clubhouse absolutely forbidding the use of the club to all minors under the age of fourteen. “That’ll fix little Paulie, I guess!” I thought. So, when I went over to the clubhouse I told the steward about it and instructed him to have the new rule printed in large letters and posted up on the bulletin-board in the hallway. He only got that pathetic smile of his on his face.
“What’s the matter with it?” I asked him. “Don’t you know it’s the very thing most of the members would be delighted with?”
“Those that have children over fourteen would, sir,” he told me. “Mr. Dalrymple tried exactly the same thing when he was Chairman; but about an hour after he had the rule posted he came to me, kind of pale, and instructed me to cross out ‘Fourteen’ and write ‘Eleven’ up, instead. The next day, after a good many people had been talking to him at the beach, it seems, he came in and told me to write ‘Four unless accompanied by a nurse’ instead of ‘Eleven’. It’s been attempted, sir, you see, and it doesn’t do at all.”
So there I was, down again; but determined to fight that thing out to the end. It was the ninth day of my chairmanship — I was Chairman of the House Committee of the Rocky Meadow Club just nine days — and I was still in a grim mood, mind you, when I got back to our cottage after that interview with the steward. In fact I was frowning and had my fighting face on me when I sat down at my desk to look over my mail.
The very first envelope I opened had a note in it from Mr. Bullfinch on Rocky Meadow Club stationery. It said he had to be ready in advance with a sufficient bank balance to pay the club’s monthly bills and he’d like a cheque from me as soon as convenient to cover the billiard-table and other articles I had ordered installed. He itemized them, also stating the total amount they came to, and when I looked at it, I thought it must be a horrible kind of joke on his part. Then I read his note twice again and took up the telephone and called him.
“Look here!” I said. “I’ve received your note but it seems to me all mixed up about club matters. It looks as if you thought I ought to pay for the new billiard-table myself, and also for an expensive new antique glass lamp and repairing a piano and reupholstering — —”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
“Matter! Why, those things were all ordered for the club!”
“Well, you ordered ’em, didn’t you?”
“Yes; but not for my own — —”
“You ordered ’em,” he said again, interrupting me kind of testily. “Of course they can’t be charged to the club, you understand, because the club hasn’t got any funds to meet such expenses. There’s a large faction determined to reduce the dues at the next annual meeting and very indignant because the place isn’t run more economically than it is. As a matter of fact, that club’s insolvent right now.”
“Look here!” I said. “Do you mean to say I’ve actually got to send you my own personal cheque for — —”
“You certainly have,” he told me. “You ordered ’em of your own free will. The club depends quite a little on gifts like these from members and hasn’t any budget to meet — —”
“Look here!” I said, interrupting in a tone I expect probably sounded kind of hostile. “Listen! If I’ve got to pay this bill, I’ll do it; but I’ve been having altogether too much trouble over there making my authority as Chairman respected; and what with one thing and another I tell you frankly if things don’t go better pretty soon I’ll resign!”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, don’t do that!” he said, and his manner changed completely. He’d been speaking with some sharpness but now he sounded kind of frightened. “For heaven’s sake, don’t talk about resigning!” he went on. “Please dismiss that idea from your mind, Mr. Massey, I beg you, please!”
“I won’t dismiss it,” I told him. “If things don’t go better I’ll do it!”
It was just then, as I was hanging up the telephone, that Mrs. Massey came in from outdoors, looking cheerful in a superior kind of way that she does sometimes. “Your right ear certainly ought to be burning,” she said. “I’ve just been hearing such splendid compliments for you from Mrs. Abercrombie, that nice old lady in the green cottage who claims she was the first summer resident at the Neck. You’ll be delighted to hear what lovely things she was saying about your chairmanship.”
“Never mind!” I told her. “I don’t care to hear any.”
Mrs. Massey didn’t pay any attention; but went right on. “Mrs. Abercrombie says she thinks it was perfectly lovely of you to accept the chairmanship. They’d asked pretty nearly everybody in the place before they got poor Mr. Dalrymple to take it, and when Mr. Dalrymple only kept it three weeks and resigned they were almost distracted, old Mrs. Abercrombie says. They saw that absolutely their only chance to get anybody would be to find someone entirely new at Mary’s Neck, who didn’t know. She says they’d practically given up when luckily somebody happened to think of you. She says it’s the most splendid thing that you were willing to serve, and she hopes you won’t be discouraged by all the complaints that are going around, because she thinks you’re going to do just wonders in the way of keeping the place up.”
“Never mind!” I said. “I don’t care to hear any more.”
“No?” Mrs. Massey asked me; then she gave a musing kind of laugh and pinched up her mouth in a way she has. “I thought maybe it might help you to get your face back to normal instead of trying to keep it looking like Mr. Mussolini’s all the time.”
With that, she laughed again and went on upstairs. I didn’t have a thing to say; — of a sudden it had kind of come over me what my associates in the Logansville Chamber of Commerce would think if they knew I had let myself be soft-soaped into a chairmanship nobody else would take and that had got me trying to order everybody around, including my own family, and pretty principally involved me in fighting with a little nine-year-old boy. It isn’t too much to say that after Mrs. Massey went out what she left behind her, sitting in the chair by that desk, was mainly a state of collapse. My condition was a good deal like that of a person coming out of a coma, or maybe just realizing that he’d been sick for some days but might get well.
