Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 643
“None at all?” Boerl asked, and laughed. “Well, you used to make a pretty good income out of architecture, didn’t you?”
“No; not very. Fair, but—”
“I see,” Boerl said. “But they say you used to live pretty high, even sweller than this. If it wasn’t out of your profession, you must have had big outside resources. Depression hit your dividends, did it?”
“Yes; it seems so.”
“Seems so? That’s cool!” Mr. Linley’s fellow-boarder looked at him with a condescending indulgence. “You’re a queer bird, Linley. Fact is, I think you’re one of the oddest guys I ever met. Everybody in the house likes you, and I guess they all of ’em think they know you; but I happen to have just a few more brains than the rest of ’em, so I see that we none of us do. I don’t really get you at all. For instance, you’re the star boarder and you got a swell place here, perfectly elegant — but not a radio nor current literature, and you don’t go to movies; yet you always seem interested in everything. Some people might say you’re sort of haywire, kind of an innocent foolish guy.” Boerl laughed. “Not me. I think you’re deeper than that. I expect maybe the truth is you’re what might be called a good deal of a philosopher.”
“I?” Linley looked surprised. “No. I believe philosophers are usually supposed to take a much less personal interest in things than I do.”
“That so, Linley? Well, then, maybe we’ll just have to classify you as sort of general good fella. That teacher across the table from me, though, claims you’re what they call a socialite. Guess she’s right. Take these swell dames, now, that drive up and send their chauffeurs in to get you to come down and—”
“I’m watched, then?” Linley laughed. “The few times that’s happened, Mr. Boerl, I think the ladies were probably relatives of mine or—”
“Oh, of course! All of ’em just his sisters and his cousins and his aunts. Foxy guy!” Boerl became humorously insinuating. “How about the dark brunette in the platinum-plated town-car? Saw you out in front on the curbstone talkin’ through the window to her, myself, day before yesterday — you bare-headed and serious as hell, and the slick mulatto chauffeur wise enough to act like he was interested in his radiator. Some baby, pal! I took a good gander at her and she’s some baby, believe you me. Boy! I sure yearned. You bet you’re watched, Linley, when you’re talkin’ to tricks like that. Don’t try to tell me that black-haired, black-eyed babe was just one of your relations! For that matter, I guess some of them are pretty high-flyers, too.”
“I’m afraid not,” Linley said. “I’m afraid they fly rather low nowadays, Mr. Boerl.”
“That so? Well, anyhow, that teacher says they always been big bugs in the city, because you belong to one of the old original cap’t’list families that used to run this part the country.” He laughed genially. “Well, since Hitler and Uncle Joe Stalin jolted us with their pact, some of us aren’t talkin’ so loud; but our crowd still kind of expects to take over this old U.S.A. some day not so far off maybe, and run it scientifically on our own lines. I guess, though, you’re one of the few of the old oppressors we won’t send to the guillotine. No, sir, you live in a good deal of style here; but anybody can tell by lookin’ at you that you wouldn’t harm a flea, and so we’ll go easier on you than on—”
He was interrupted by a tapping upon the hall door. Victor Linley said, “Excuse me, Mr. Boerl. This is very interesting and I hope to hear more of it; but I—” Then, as explanation of the unfinished sentence, he opened the door and beheld the stout housemaid who tried her best to keep his rooms clean.
“It’s a lady caller, Mr. Linley,” she announced deferentially. “It’s Mrs. Frederic Ide, sir.”
“I’ll get out,” Boerl said, stepping toward the door. “No high society for me, thanks! I’ll—”
“Not at all,” Victor interrupted, as Mrs. Ide came in. “Won’t you stay? I’d like you to meet my sister. Harriet, this is Mr. Boerl, one of my friends here and—”
“Glad to made your ‘quaintance,” Boerl said to her, obviously intimidated and in hasty departure, though her nod and glance were not discourteous. “Be seein’ you, Linley.”
XX
WHAT AN UNPLEASANT type!” Harriet Ide sat down sadly. “I can’t tell you, Victor, how it makes me feel to see you living in such a place and with such people about you!”
“Dear girl, I can only tell you again how wrong you are.” He took a chair opposite her, beside the fireplace; the golden spaniel jumped upon his lap and disposed himself there for renewed slumbers. “These rooms are comfortable and the people are interesting.”
“Oh, Victor!”
“They are,” he insisted. “They lead as interesting lives as anybody does and have as interesting thoughts. My fellow-boarders are anything but commonplace, though I admit nothing’s commonplace if you really take time to look at it. It’s absorbing to see how perfectly my friends here fit into the pattern of all human life — just as the rest of us compulsorily do, of course, every man in his own way. I don’t know anything more dramatically a cross-section of the world than what’s narrow-mindedly called a ‘second-rate boarding-house’. It’s always fascinating.”
“Fascinating? Oh, Victor, what a word for this dingy—”
“It’s a beautiful example of a microcosm!” he protested, with unusual animation. “By the pattern of all human life I mean the variegated shapes produced by the single force that moves us — the force that’s sometimes called good and’s sometimes called evil but is always the same thing, the root of all human action, the thing that makes progress and decadence, and war and peace, and generosity and greed — and booms and depressions — and capitalism and communism and—”
“Victor!” His sister’s sad voice was a little impatient. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Why, about human egoism of course, Harriet.” His eagerness increased. “Every meal here is a treat, and I like my associates at table all the better for the openness with which they show how natural-born universal egoism controls the stuff they’re made of — a substance about as good as you’ll find at most tables. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy—”
“Oh, Victor!” Mrs. Ide softly cried again. “You think I don’t know what this impoverishment and the dreadful change in your living mean to you?”
“Impoverishment, no!” he exclaimed. “I used to live in buzz and bustle — a dozen different kinds of activity. What you call impoverishment gives me time for meditation; and how does anybody get at realities without it? We don’t know at all what we’re doing so long as we live busily in action, or in emotion, or by stimulants from our five senses. A man can live, instead, in his mind; and for me this has been a happy discovery because I’ve learned that I possess some mental resources — not important ones of course, except to me; but they suffice. For most people these lean years have been hard and for some they’ve been killing. Thinking of what they’ve done for just my inconsequent self, though, Harriet, I could easily find it in my heart to thank God for the Depression!”
“What?” she murmured vaguely, and, perceiving that she wasn’t listening, he lost his animation, laughed briefly at himself, and, having thrown the remains of his cigar into the fire, stroked Locksie reflectively.
“You’re on your way home from church, Harriet?”
“Yes, I — I thought I’d stop in and see you for a moment.”
“Just for a moment? Something you’d like to talk about?”
“No, not in particular, Victor. That is, I—”
“Yes, there is.” Victor’s hand, about to move caressively upon the spaniel’s golden coat, paused and was still. “I’m afraid I know there’s something in particular you’d like to talk to me about, Harriet.”
“No, there isn’t, Victor,” she said stoutly; but the firelight into which she gazed showed him the sudden moisture upon her lower eyelids.
“No?” He began to stroke the dog again. “I seem to gather from Hatcher that he’s perceived in you and Fred a considerable uneasiness. I think he said he’d been asking you about it and—”
“I’d rather not speak of it.” Her voice had a little sharpness. “There’s one thing, though, I think perhaps I’d better tell you. I haven’t mentioned it to you before, because what’s the use of adding to your distresses, especially if it mightn’t happen? Now, though, I’m afraid it’s going to. When Ada came home from visiting Alice out west she was worried. Things were going pretty badly with Jack Upham, and Ada was afraid there was going to be a crash. Well, it’s happened. That utility corporation had to make an economy drive, and Jack’s been dropped. I had a letter from Alice day before yesterday. She said that if he couldn’t find a new position quickly — and there wasn’t anything in sight — she was afraid she’d have to ask if she couldn’t bring the children and the three of them visit us — she spoke of it as a visit, poor thing! — until Jack could get into something else. It’s going to be a problem to arrange proper room in the house for them, especially if Janey comes home for the holidays, and with only the cook — no maids to do the rooms — Oh, well, I suppose we can manage somehow. If it only hadn’t had to come upon us just now!”
Victor put Locksie down on the rug, and rose. “Well, Alice is my sister, too,” he said.
Mrs. Ide jumped up. “You don’t think I’ve told you about it in the hope that you could do anything for them, Victor! Good heavens, don’t you suppose we all know you can’t? When you’re down to living like this—”
He was troubled. “I ought to be able—”
“No — no, please!” She put a hand on his arm. “I oughtn’t to’ve told you. We can manage. We’ll find room in the house and food for them somehow, and that’s all they’ll need. Jack’s a capable man and he’ll get into something. Ordinarily Fred and I’d be able to handle it if it weren’t—”
“Yes?” Victor said quickly. “If it weren’t for what?”
“Nothing.”
He took both of her hands. “Harriet, this bad luck of the Upham family isn’t what’s on your mind. You can’t look me in the eye and maintain it. Won’t you tell me?”
“No; I can’t tell anybody,” she said desolately, released her hands from his and moved slowly toward the door. “I can’t, even though it mayn’t be long before everybody’ll know it.”
“It’s that bad, Harriet — and that close?”
“Yes.” For a moment she said no more; then she turned toward him with the air of one who absentmindedly introduces a negligible subject. “Oh — I suppose you haven’t happened to call on Sarah yet?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“I suppose you’re going to, though, aren’t you?” In response he only looked at her; and, at that, she made a remonstrance. “Oh, but don’t you think you really ought to, Victor? She’s asked you, hasn’t she? Hasn’t she done more? Hasn’t she telephoned? Hasn’t she even written to—”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“More than once, Victor?” He was silent, and Mrs. Ide spoke impulsively. “Yes, I see she has! That’s a good deal — from Sarah Lash — don’t you think?”
“Is it, Harriet? Well — let’s not go into that.”
“Others might envy you,” Mrs. Ide said. “Your own nephew, for instance.”
“My nephew?” Victor, after the briefest moment of surprise, spoke musingly. “Yes, I see. A good-looking young man only next door. Oh, yes, of course!”
“Yes,” Mrs. Ide said. “Poor Hatcher! She’s quite taken him up; so I’m afraid he’d rather begrudge the invitations you’ve had. Poor boy, I’m afraid he’s in quite a state.”
“You mean he believes he is, Harriet.”
“No; I mean he is.”
“Dear me!” Victor said. “I’d rather taken it for granted that he and Dorcy Aldrich—”
“No; not any more, Victor — at least, not any more for Hatcher. I don’t know about Dorcy. I’m afraid the gorgeous Sarah’s overwhelmed him. Preposterous, isn’t it?”
“No.” Her brother seemed to ponder. “I shouldn’t call it preposterous. He’s not much like the boy in the old jokes, falling in love with the schoolteacher twice his age. Sarah’d most easily capture a good young imagination. It’d be natural, under the circumstances.”
“Perhaps,” the sister assented. “I don’t know why I’ve mentioned it; I didn’t mean to, and I don’t really take it seriously. At Hatcher’s age—”
“It’s highly sensitive,” Victor interrupted. “People usually feel pretty sharply at Hatcher’s age.”
“Yes — but briefly, Victor.”
“If they’re sound,” he said, “and of course Hatcher’s—”
“Victor!” Mrs. Ide stepped toward him. “Couldn’t you — couldn’t you bring yourself to be nice to her? I mean couldn’t you at least go to see her and be friendly and — and—”
“And what, Harriet?”
“Oh, dear!” she said, and the words were a moan of confession — confession that she was desperately asking a great deal of him. “Couldn’t you?”
“No, I could not,” he answered.
Her right hand, lifted to add eloquence to the appeal she’d just made to him, dropped to her side. “I must get myself home,” she said in a dead voice. “You’ll come out to us to-night for Sunday evening supper as usual, won’t you?”
“Yes, dear.”
Without any more to say she again turned to the door, which he silently opened for her. He went downstairs with her and out to the curb. She stepped into her car and drove away, not having spoken to him, or looked at him, again.
He returned to his room and sat before his disappearing fire, regardless of the summons of a gong downstairs. Ignoring the sound’s more clamorous repetition, to warn him that his mid-day meal would be both chilled and sparse if he didn’t bestir himself, he became so deeply preoccupied that he had even no ear for his spaniel’s repeatedly expressed wish to return to his lap. This meditation, by no means the abstract thought of a detached philosopher, was informing Victor Linley that the people he most loved in the world were facing imminent peril.
They stood close to calamity, a hint of the nature of which began to be dimly revealed to him by what his sister had just pitiably implored him to do. He knew that it wasn’t on Hatcher’s account that she had begged him to marry Sarah Florian.
XXI
ON SUNDAY EVENINGS the Ides had supper, not dinner; and, when Janey or Hatcher, or both, were at home, Mrs. Ide sometimes asked four or five of their young friends to join the family party at the table and enliven mild “parlor games” afterward. This evening when Mr. Linley arrived, a little while before the time set for the meal, he was clamorously welcomed by his niece, Frances, as he removed his overcoat in the hall. She came running from the living-room and threw her arms about him.
“Thank goodness you’ve come, Uncle Victor!” she cried. “There’s a whole crowd in there and I been trying to entertain ’em; but Hatcher told me we didn’t need anybody to be the life of the party. Hatcher’s acting terrible for a person a party’s for. Uncle Victor, would you like to know a secret?”
“Yes, indeed, Frances! Always.”
“It’s about Hatcher,” Frances whispered. “Mother asked all these people of his to supper on his account; but she didn’t think to tell him they were coming till late this afternoon and he said he didn’t want ’em, she better telephone ’em not to come; but she said it was too late and he said all right, he might decide to go out somewhere any minute right in the middle of it and they’d be on her hands and she deserved it. He stayed mad about it till they commenced coming and I think he still is, Uncle Victor, and that’s why he was so rude to me about my being the life of the party that certainly needs one. Don’t tell him I told you.”
“I won’t, Frances.”
“Thank you, Uncle Victor.” Frances again spoke aloud. “It’s stupid in there. There’s only one I can get to do anything and she isn’t enough to make it a good game.”
“Game?” her uncle inquired. “What game?”
“Animal-Mineral-or-Vegetable, Uncle Victor. There’s Hatcher and Dorcy and Mary Gilpin and Mr. Wilson, the one they call Pinkie, and Gilpin Murray and Amy from across the street; and only one of ‘em’s willing to play. It’s Mary Gilpin, because most of the rest of ’em act like they just want to sit around and say ‘What?’ like Hatcher; so I bet they’re in love or’ve had their feelings hurt or something. Anyhow, it’s the way they act and it gets in my hair! Uncle Victor, will you play Animal-Mineral-or-Vegetable with me and Mary Gilpin?”
“Glad to,” Mr. Linley said. “Just a minute first, though, if you don’t mind.” With Frances beside him, he stepped into the living-room to exchange greetings with the young guests, whom he at once perceived to be as subdued in manner as his small niece had said. An uneasiness seemed to prevail, perhaps an emanation from the acting host, Hatcher. Standing with his back to the room, and apparently unaware of any hospitable duties, he was gazing out of the bow window.
Mr. Linley made the customary inquiries in regard to the health of parents, coming to Dorcy last; and, as he took her hand, he looked at her somewhat attentively. His expressions of solicitude were a little stressed.
“Mother’s fine, thanks,” Dorcy said languidly. “Father walked over with me. He’s here, though he isn’t staying for supper and’s got to go home to take her to a party somewhere. He’s in the library talking to Mr. Ide if you’d like to see him.”
“Yes — yes, I should.” Linley turned to Frances, who was insisting upon her game. “I will, I will,” he assented. “Just give me time to say hello to somebody my own age and I’ll be back.”
“I bet you won’t!” Frances protested. “If you go in the lib’ary with Father and Uncle Harry Aldrich you’ll get started into old people’s talking and you won’t come. You’ll—”
