THUNDER ON THE LEFT

OTHER BOOKS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Fiction

Parnassus on Wheels
The Haunted Bookshop
Kathleen
Tales from a Rolltop Desk
Where the Blue Begins
Pandora Lifts the Lid
(with Don Marquis)

Essays

Shandygaff
Mince Pie
Pipefuls
Plum Pudding
Travels in Philadelphia
The Powder of Sympathy
Inward Ho!
Religio Journalistici

Poetry

Songs for a Little House
The Rocking Horse
Hide and Seek
Chimneysmoke
Translations from the Chinese
Parsons’ Pleasure

Plays

One Act Plays

Thunder
ON
The LEFT

Among the notionable dictes of
antique Rome was the fancy that when men
heard thunder on the left the gods had somewhat
of speciall advertisement to impart.

Then did the prudent pause and lay down
their affaire to studye what omen Jove
intended.

—SIR EUSTACE PEACHTREE.
THE DANGERS OF THIS MORTALL LIFE.

By Christopher Morley

Garden City New York
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1925

COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY HARPER
& BROTHERS. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
FIRST EDITION

TO
S. A. E.

The undertaking a comedy not merely sentimental was very dangerous.

—Oliver Goldsmith.

On parla des passions. “Ah! qu’elles sont funestes!” disait Zadig.—“Ce sont les vents qui enflent les voiles du vaisseau,” repartit l’ermite: “elles le submergent quelquefois; mais sans elles il ne pourrait voguer. La bile rend colère et malade; mais sans la bile l’homme ne saurait vivre. Tout est dangereux ici-bas, et tout est nécessaire.”

—Voltaire, Zadig.

“Your mind had to be tormented and fevered and exalted before you could see a god.”

“It was cruel of you to do this,” she said.

—James Stephens,
In the Land of Youth.

THUNDER ON THE LEFT

Thunder on the Left

I

NOW that the children were getting big, it wasn’t to be called the Nursery any longer. In fact, it was being repapered that very day: the old scribbled Mother Goose pattern had already been covered with new strips, damp and bitter-smelling. But Martin thought he would be able to remember the gay fairy-tale figures, even under the bright fresh paper. There were three bobtailed mice, dancing. They were repeated several times in the procession of pictures that ran round the wall. How often he had studied them as he lay in bed waiting for it to be time to get up. It must be excellent to be Grown Up and able to dress as early as you please. What a golden light lies across the garden those summer mornings.

At any rate, it would be comforting to know that the bobtailed mice were still there, underneath. To-day the smell of the paste and new paper was all through the house. The men were to have come last week. To-day it was awkward: it was Martin’s birthday (he was ten) and he and Bunny had been told to invite some friends for a small party. It was raining, too: one of those steady drumming rains that make a house so cosy. The Grown-Ups were having tea on the veranda, so the party was in the dining room. When Mrs. Richmond looked through the glass porch doors to see how they were getting on, she was surprised to find no one visible.

“Where on earth have those children gone?” she exclaimed. “How delightfully quiet they are.”

There was a seven-voiced halloo of triumph, and a great scuffle and movement under the big mahogany table. Several steamer rugs had been pinned together and draped across the board so that they hung down forming a kind of pavilion. From this concealment the children came scrambling and surrounded her in a lively group.

“We had all disappeared!” said Bunny. She was really called Eileen, but she was soft and plump and brown-eyed and twitch-nosed; three years younger than her brother.

“You came just in time to save us,” said Martin gaily.

“Just in time to save my table,” amended Mrs. Richmond. “Bunny, you know how you cried when you scratched your legs going blackberrying. Do you suppose the table likes having its legs scratched any better than you do? And those grimy old rugs all over my lace cloth. Martin, take them off at once.”

“We were playing Stern Parents,” explained Alec, a cousin and less awed by reproof than the other guests, who were merely friends.

Mrs. Richmond was taken aback. “What a queer name for a game.”

“It’s a lovely game,” said Ruth, her face pink with excitement. “You pretend to be Parents and you all get together and talk about the terrible time you have with your children——”

Martin broke in: “And you tell each other all the things you’ve had to scold them for——”

“And you have to forbid their doing all kinds of things,” said Ben.

“And speak to them Very Seriously,” chirped Bunny. Mrs. Richmond felt a twinge of merriment at the echo of this familiar phrase.

“And every time you’ve punished them for something that doesn’t really matter——” (this was Phyllis).

“—You’re a Stern Parent, and have to disappear!” cried Martin.

“You get under the table and can’t come out until someone says something nice about you.”

“It’s a very instructing game, ’cause you have to know just how far children can be allowed to go——”

“But we were all Stern Parents, and had all disappeared.”

“Yes, and then Mother said we were delightfully quiet, and that saved us.”

“What an extraordinary game,” said Mrs. Richmond.

“All Martin’s games are extraordinary,” said Phyllis. “He just made up one called Quarrelsome Children.”

“Will you play it with us?” asked Bunny.

“I don’t believe that’s a new game,” said her mother. “I’m sure I’ve seen it played, too often. But it’s time for the cake. Straighten up the chairs and I’ll go and get it.”

Seated round the table, and left alone with the cake, the lighted candles, and the ice cream, the children found much to discuss.

“Ten candles,” said Alec, counting them carefully.

“I had thirteen on mine, last birthday,” said Phyllis, the oldest of the girls.

“That’s nothing, so did I,” said Ben.

“Your cook’s clever,” said Ruth. “She’s marked the places to cut, with icing, so you can make all the pieces even.”

“I think it was foolish of her,” said Martin, “because Bunny is quite a small child still; if she has too much chocolate she comes out in spots.”

Bunny and Joyce, at the other end of the table, looked at each other fleetingly, in a tacit alliance of juniority. Joyce was also seven, a dark little elf, rather silent.

“Why don’t you blow out the candles?” shrilled Bunny.

This effectively altered the topic. After the sudden hurricane had ceased, Martin began to cut, obediently following the white spokes of sugar.

“I wonder what it feels like to be grown up?” said Alec.

“I guess we’ll know if we wait long enough,” said Phyllis.

“How old do you have to be, to be grown up?” asked Ruth.

“A man’s grown up when he’s twenty-one,” Ben stated firmly.

“Is Daddy twenty-one?” said Bunny.

Cries of scorn answered this. “Of course he is,” said Martin. “Daddy’s middle-age, he’s over thirty. He’s what they call primeoflife, I heard him say so.”

“That’s just before your hair begins to come out in the comb,” said Alec.

Bunny was undismayed, perhaps encouraged by seeing in front of her more ice cream than she had ever been left alone with before.

“Daddy isn’t grown up,” she insisted. “The other day when we played blind man’s buff on the beach, Mother said he was just a big boy.”

“Girls grow up quicker,” said Phyllis. “My sister’s eighteen, she’s so grown up she’ll hardly speak to me. It happened all at once. She went for a week-end party, when she came back she was grown up.”

“That’s not grown up,” said Ben. “That’s just stuck up. Girls get like that. It’s a form of nervousness.”

They were not aware that Ben had picked up this phrase by overhearing it applied to some eccentricities of his own. They were impressed, and for a moment the ice cream and cake engaged all attentions. Then a round of laughter from the veranda reopened the topic.

“Why do men laugh more than ladies?” asked Bunny.

“It must be wonderful,” said Martin.

“You bet!” said Ben. “Think of having long trousers, and smoking a pipe, blowing rings, going to town every day, going to the bank and getting money——”

“And all the drug stores where you can stop and have sodas,” said Ruth.

“Sailing a boat!”

“Going shopping!”

“The circus!” shouted Bunny.

“I don’t mean just doing things,” said Martin. “I mean thinking things.” His eager face, clearly lit by two candles in tall silver sticks, was suddenly and charmingly grave. “Able to think what you want to; not to have to—to do things you know are wrong.” For an instant the boy seemed to tremble on the edge of uttering the whole secret infamy of childhood; the most pitiable of earth’s slaveries; perhaps the only one that can never be dissolved. But the others hardly understood; nor did he, himself. He covered his embarrassment by grabbing at a cracker of gilt paper in which Alec was rummaging for the pull.

Joyce had slipped from her chair and was peeping through one of the windows. Something in the talk had struck home to her in a queer, troublesome way. Suddenly, she didn’t know why, she wanted to look at the Grown-Ups, to see exactly what they were like. The rest of the party followed her in a common impulse. Joyce’s attitude caused them to tiptoe across the room and peer covertly from behind the long curtains. Without a word of explanation all were aware of their odd feeling of spying on the enemy—an implacable enemy, yet one who is (how plainly we realize it when we see him off guard in the opposing trench, busy at his poor affairs, cooking or washing his socks) so kin to ourselves. With the apprehensive alertness of those whose lives may depend on their nimble observation, they watched the unconscious group at the tea table.

“Daddy’s taking three lumps,” said Bunny. She spoke louder than is prudent in an outpost, and was s-s-sh-ed.

“Your mother’s got her elbow on the table,” Ruth whispered.

“Daddy’s smacking his lips and chomping,” insisted Bunny.

“That’s worse than talking with your mouth full.”

“How queer they look when they laugh.”

“Your mother lifts her head like a hen swallowing.”

“Yours has her legs crossed.”

“It’s a form of nervousness.”

“They do all the things they tell us not to,” said Joyce.

“Look, he’s reaching right across the table for another cake.”

Martin watched his parents and their friends. What was there in the familiar scene that became strangely perplexing? He could not have put it into words, but there was something in those voices and faces that made him feel frightened, a little lonely. Was that really Mother, by the silver urn with the blue flame flattened under it? He could tell by her expression that she was talking about things that belong to that Other World, the thrillingly exciting world of Parents, whose secrets are so cunningly guarded. That world changes the subject, alters the very tone of its voice, when you approach. He had a wish to run out on the veranda, to reassure himself by the touch of her soft cool arm in the muslin dress. He wanted to touch the teapot, to see if it was hot. If it was, he would know that all this was real. They had gone so far away.—Or were they also only playing a game?

“They look as though they were hiding something,” he said.

“They’re having fun,” Phyllis said. “They always do; grown-ups have a wonderful time.”

“Come on,”—Martin remembered that he was the host—“the ice cream will get cold.” This was what Daddy always said.

Bunny felt a renewed pride as she climbed into her place at the end of the table. Martin looked solemnly handsome in his Eton collar across the shining spread of candlelight and cloth and pink peppermints. The tinted glass panes above the sideboard were cheerful squares of colour against the wet grey afternoon. She wriggled a little, to reëstablish herself on the slippery chair.

“Our family is getting very grown up,” she said happily. “We’re not going to have a nursery any more. It’s going to be the guest room.”

“I don’t think I want to be grown up,” said Alec suddenly. “It’s silly. I don’t believe they have a good time at all.”

This was a disconcerting opinion. Alec, as an older cousin, held a position of some prestige. A faint dismay was apparent in the gazes that crossed rapidly in the sparkling waxlight.

“I think we ought to make up our minds about it,” Martin said gravely. “Pretty soon, the way things are going, we will be, then it’ll be too late.”

“Silly, what can you do?” said Phyllis. “Of course we’ve got to grow up, everyone does, unless they die.” Her tone was clear and positive, but also there was a just discernible accent of inquiry. She had not yet quite lost her childhood birthright of wonder, of belief that almost anything is possible.

“We’d have to Take Steps,” cried Alec, unconsciously quoting the enemy. “We could just decide among ourselves that we simply wouldn’t, and if we all lived together we could go on just like we are.”

“It would be like a game,” said Martin, glowing.

“With toys?” ejaculated Bunny, entranced.

Ben was firmly opposed. “I won’t do it. I want to have long trousers and grow a moustache.”

Martin’s face was serious with the vision of huge alternatives.

“That’s it,” he said. “We’ve got to know before we can decide. It’s terribly important. If they don’t have a good time, we’d better——”

“We could ask them if they’re happy,” exclaimed Ruth, thrilled by the thought of running out on the veranda to propose this stunning question.

“They wouldn’t tell you,” said Alec. “They’re too polite.”

Phyllis was trying to remember instructive examples of adult infelicity. “They don’t tell the truth,” she agreed. “Mother once said that if Daddy went on like that she’d go mad, and I waited and waited, and he did and she didn’t.”

“You mustn’t believe what they say,” Martin continued. “They never tell the truth if they think children are around. They don’t want us to know what it’s like.”

“Perhaps they’re ashamed of being grown up,” Ben suggested.

“We must find out,” Martin said, suddenly feeling in his mind the expanding brightness of an idea. “It’ll be a new game. We’ll all be spies in the enemy’s country, we’ll watch them and see exactly how they behave, and bring in a report.”

“Get hold of their secret codes, and find where their forces are hidden,” cried Ben, who liked the military flavour of this thought.

“I think it’s a silly game,” said Phyllis. “You can’t really find out anything; and if you did, you’d be punished. Spies always get caught.”

“Penalty of death!” shouted the boys, elated.

“It’s harder than being a real spy,” said Martin. “You can’t wear the enemy’s uniform and talk their language. But I’m going to do it, anyhow.”

“Me too!” Joyce exclaimed from the other end of the table, where she and Bunny had followed the conversation with half-frightened excitement.

“I want to be a spy!” added Bunny.

“Mustn’t have too many spies,” said Alec. “The enemy would suspect something was up. Send one first, he’ll see what he can find and report to us.”

It was not clear to Bunny exactly who the enemy were or how the spying was to be carried out; but if Martin was to do it, it would be well done, she was certain. Spying, that suggested secrecy, and secrecy——

“Martin has a little roll-top desk with a key!” she shouted. “Daddy gave it to him for his birthday.”

“Oh, I forgot,” said Phyllis. She ran out into the living room, and returned with a large parcel. “Many happy returns,” she said, laying it in front of Martin. If you listen intently, behind the innocent little phrase you can overhear, like a whispering chorus, the voices of innumerable parents: “And don’t forget, when you give it to him, to say Many happy returns.”

The others also hurried to get the packages that had been left in the vestibule. There was a great rattling of paper and untying of string; an embarrassed reiteration of thankyous by Martin. He felt it awkward to say the same thing again for each gift.

Hearing the movement in the dining room, the grown-ups had now come in.

“Such a pretty sight.”

“I love children’s parties, their faces are always a picture.”

“Martin, did you say thank you to Alec for that lovely croquet set?”

“This is what I gave him,” said Ben, pushing forward the parcheesi board.

“The girls are so dainty, like little flowers.”

“Who is the little dark one, over by the window?”

“That’s Joyce.—Why, Joyce dear, what are you crying about?”

The strong maternal voice rang through the room with a terrible publicity of compassion. The children stared. Bunny ran and threw her arms round her friend, who had hidden her face in the curtain. Bunny thought she knew what was wrong. Joyce had forgotten to bring a present, and was ashamed because all the others had done so. The miserable little figure tried to efface itself in the curtain; even the tiny pearl buttons at the back of her pink frock had come undone. Things that are close to us, how loyal they are, how they follow the moods of their owners.

“There, there, honey, what’s the trouble? After such a lovely party?” This was authoritative pity, threateningly musical.

Bunny pressed her warm lips against a wet petal of nostril.

“Martin doesn’t mind,” she whispered. “He hates presents.”

Joyce could feel powerful fingers buttoning the cool gap between her shoulders. When that was done she would be turned round and asked what was the matter.

“Perhaps she has a pain,” boomed a masculine vibration. “These parties always upset them. Worst thing for children.”

Joyce could smell a whiff of cigar and see large feet in white canvas shoes approaching. Best to face it now before worse happens. She turned desperately, hampered by Bunny’s embrace, almost throttling her in an excess of affection. Breaking away she ran across the room, where Martin and the boys were averting their eyes from the humiliation of the would-be spy. She thrust into his hand a tiny package, damp now.

“It was so small,” she said.

A moment of appalling silence hung over the trembling pair. Martin could feel it coming, the words “What do you say, Martin?” seemed forming and rolling up over his head like opal banks of summer storm. Yet he could not have said a word. He seized her hand and shook it, with a grotesque bob of his head.

“Such a little gentleman, how do you train them? I can’t do anything with Ben, he’s so rough.”

Joyce was blotted out by a merciful hooded raincoat. As she struggled through its dark rubber-smelling folds she could hear voices coming down from above.

“Alec, say good-bye to your little cousins—no, we must say your big cousins, mustn’t we?”

“Thank Mrs. Richmond for such a nice party.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Richmond, for such a nice party.”

“Martin, you haven’t opened Joyce’s present.”

“I don’t want to open it,” murmured Martin sullenly. Then he knew he had said the wrong thing.

“Don’t want to open it? Why of course you want to open it. We don’t measure presents by their size, do we, Joyce?”

Joyce, almost escaped, was drawn again into the arena.

“Come, Alec, we’ll see what Joyce has given Martin and then you must go.”

“I can’t untie it, the string’s wet,” muttered Martin.

The watching circle drew closer.

“Wet? Nonsense. Here, give it to me.”

Unfolding of sodden paper. A mouse of soft grey plush, with little glassy eyes and a long silky tail. And two wheels under his stomach, a key to wind him by.

“Why, it’s the mouse we saw in the window at the cigar store. Joyce was crazy about it.”

“You see, Martin, she’s given you a mouse because she wanted it so much for herself.”

“It isn’t very much, my dear, but there’s so little to choose from, here in the country.”

“It’s like the mice we had on the nursery wallpaper,” said Bunny, praising valiantly.

“Wind it up and see it run.”

There are some situations that, once entered, must be carried through to the end. Martin wound. He could tell by the feel of the key that something was wrong.

“I’ll play with it later,” he said.

“Don’t be so stubborn, Martin. We’re all waiting to see it.”

Joyce’s gaze was riveted on the mouse. She remembered the ominous click in its vitals, when she had been giving it an ecstatic trial. But perhaps Martin, with the magic boys have in these matters, could make it go again, as it went—so thrillingly, in mouselike darts and curves—on the cigar-store floor.

Martin put it down, giving it a deft push. It ran a few inches and stopped.

“It runs fine,” he said hastily. “But it won’t go here on the rug.”

“Let’s see it,” said Ben, whose mechanical sense was not satisfied by so brief an exhibition.

“It’s mine,” snapped Martin fiercely, and put it in his pocket.

“We really must go,” said someone.

“Would you each like a piece of Martin’s cake to take home?”

“Oh, no, thank you, I think they’ve had plenty.”

“Did you make a wish?”

“No, we forgot,” said Martin.

“Oh, what a pity. When you blow out the candles on a birthday cake you should always make a wish.”

“Will it come true?”

“If it’s a nice wish.”

“Light them again and do it now,” said one of the parents. The drill must be finished.

“Yes, do, before the children go.”

“Will it work if you light them again?” asked Martin doubtfully.

“Every bit as well.”

The ten candles were reassembled on the remaining sector of cake, and Martin, feeling very self-conscious, stood by while they were relit. His guests were pushed forward.

“All ready? Blow!”

There was a loud puffing. Bunny’s blast, a little too late, blew a fragrant waver of smoke into his face.

“Did you wish?”

“Yes,” said Martin, “I——”

“You mustn’t tell it! If you tell, it won’t come true.”

But he hadn’t wished, yet. He wanted to wait a moment, to get it just right. As the children turned away, trooping toward the door, Martin made one hasty movement that no one saw. With a quick slice of the sharp cake-knife he cut off the tail of the plush mouse. Now it would always serve to remind him of the tailless mice in the room that was no longer a nursery. Then, with the snuff of smoking candles still in his nose, he wished.

II

“DEAR MISS CLYDE,” wrote Mrs. Granville, “it will be so nice to meet you again after all these years. You can imagine my surprise when I found that the house Mr. Granville has taken for the summer is the old Richmond place, which I remember so well from long ago. Twenty-one years, isn’t it? It hasn’t changed a bit, but everything seems so much smaller, even the ocean somehow. The house has been shut up a long time, since the summer the Richmonds went away. We want you to join our Family Picnic, which is always an amusing affair. Mr. Granville admires your work so much, I did not realize until recently that you must be the same person I knew as a child. There are other artists here too, the Island has become quite a summer camp for painters, the woods are full of them, painting away merrily. I am sorry this is so late, but just send us a wire saying you can come....”

She paused to reread the letter, and changed “so nice,” in the first line, to “nice.” She changed “twenty-one” to “nearly twenty.” She crossed out “painting away merrily.” How do I know whether they’re merry? she asked herself. Then she noticed that the word “summer” was used three times. She changed one of them to “year.” No, that made three “years.” Put “for the vacation” instead of “for the summer.” Now the letter must be copied again.

Why on earth George wanted her to invite the Clyde creature when things were complicated enough already ... she had never cared much for her even as a child ... to have outsiders here for the Picnic when they had only just got the old house in running order, and Lizzie was overworked in the kitchen, and expenses terrific anyhow ... George thought Miss Clyde might be the right person to do the pictures for the booklet he was writing for the railroad company. Always thinking of his business first and her convenience afterward. Business was something to be attended to in offices, not to be mixed up with your home life. Never try to make social friends of your business acquaintances, how many times had she told George that?

Damn the Picnic, damn the Picnic, damn the Picnic!

Of course she had only brought down one sheet of paper; now she must go up again for more. The dining table was the single place in the house she could write a letter. If she halted in the bedroom, in a moment Nounou was at the door with endless this that and the other about the children. If she sat down on the porch, Lizzie could see her from the pantry window and would come at once with stentorian palaver. Why couldn’t a cook do what she was told, not argue about it? In the little sitting room George had spread out his business papers; anyhow, she couldn’t bear him near her when she wanted to write. And in the garden it was too hot. A bumblebee was bumping and grumbling against the pane. If you took a cloth and held him, to put him outdoors, his deep warm hum would rise to a piercing scream of anger. She felt like that. If any one touched her....

The bee was fussing up and down the window, the one with red and blue and orange panes. She remembered that window from childhood visits to the Richmonds. When you looked through the orange glass, the purest sky turned a leaden green, dull with menace; the clear northern sunlight became a poisoned tropic glare. And the blue panes made everything a crazy cold moonscape, with strange grape-juice colours underneath the leaves. It reminded her of George’s favourite remark, in moments of stress, that women’s conduct is entirely physiological. Ponderous pedantry! Vulgar too. Physiology, a hateful word. Suddenly she felt an immense pity for all women ... even Miss Clyde. She went up to the bedroom to get another sheet of paper.

George had actually moved the bureau at last, so that the light fell justly on the mirror. Yes, the pale green dress was pretty. Like lettuce and mayonnaise, George had said, admiring the frail yellow collar. It brought out the clear blue of the eyes, like sluiced pebbles. She was almost amazed (looking closely) to see how clear they were, after so many angers, so much—physiology. One can be candid in solitude. Thirty-four. What was that story she had read, which said that a woman is at her most irresistible at thirty-five? Mother had sent it to her, in a magazine, and had written in the margin True of my Phyllis. She laughed. What a merciless comedy life is. Ten years before, Mother would have marked in the same way any story that said twenty-five. Was there no such thing as truth? Blessed Mother, who knew that woman must be flattered. A pity that story hadn’t been in a book instead of a magazine. Books carry more authority.... But books, pooh! Who had ever written a book that told the innermost truth? Thank God, in her secret heroic self she was aware of joy and disgust, but she kept them private. Truth is about other people, not about me. A woman doesn’t bear and rear three children ... bring them into the world, a comelier phrase ... and cohabit with a queer fish like George without knowing what life amounts to. And how enviable she was: young, pretty, slender, with three such adorable kiddies.

“I don’t care, there won’t be any one at the Picnic prettier. I was made to be happy and I’m going to be.”

She hummed a little tune. “Jesus lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly.” George was vulgar, but he was amusing. When the beetle buzzed down inside her blouse at the beach supper, tickling and crawling so far that she had to go into the bushes to take him out, George said “That must have been the bosom-fly you’re always singing about.” Sometimes it seemed as though the world was made for the vulgar people, there are always so many ridiculous embarrassments lying in wait for the sensitive. When the wind blew, her skirts always went higher than any one else’s. She would wear the new pink camisole at the Picnic, that fitted very snugly ... still, a thing like that bosom-fly would hardly happen twice. George always wanted to take jam and sardines on a picnic; sticky stuff that attracts the bees and ants. Fortunately we’re all wearing knickers nowadays.... Poor old blundering, affectionate, and maddening George. Still it was something to have married a man with brains. There were so many, so much more attractive, she could have had, as Mother (dear loyal Mother) often reminded her. It’s a good thing people don’t know what mothers and married daughters talk about. That is the rock that life is founded upon: an alliance against the rest of the world. Away off in the future, when her own daughters were married, she would have them to confide in. You must have someone to whom you can say what you think. But which of the three? You can’t confide in more than one. Three little girls, three darling little girls, like dolls. Thank goodness there wasn’t a boy to grow up like George: obstinate, greedy, always wanting to do the wrong thing ... it was enough to break any woman’s spirit, trying to teach a man to do things the way nice people do them. If George wanted to lead an unconventional life, he ought to have been an artist, not gone in for business.... And such a crazy kind of business, Publicity, now working for one company, now for another, here there and everywhere, neither flesh nor fowl nor good red income. A man ought to have a settled job, with an office in some fixed place, so you always know where he is. A country club is a good thing for a husband, too, where he can meet the right sort of men (how handsome they are in those baggy breeches and golf stockings), lawyers and a banker or two, influential men with nice manners. You can always ’phone to the clubhouse and leave word; or drive up in the coupé (it ought to be a coupé) and bring him home to dinner. She could hear voices, voices of young pretty wives (not too young, not quite as pretty): “Who is that in the green dress, with the three little girls all dressed alike, aren’t they cunning!—Oh, that’s Mrs. Granville, Mrs. George Granville, her husband’s in the advertising business, he adores her.”

Where was the box of notepaper? The children must have been at it, the top had been jammed on carelessly, split at one corner. Of all annoying things, the worst is to have people pawing in your bureau; there isn’t any key, of course. How can a woman be happy if she can’t even have any privacy in her own bureau drawer? If George ever wants anything he always comes rummaging here first of all. The other day it was the little prayer book.—Why, George, what do you want with a prayer book? I thought you were an atheist.—So I am, but I want to strengthen my disbelief. I was beginning to weaken.—What a way to talk. George is an atheist, but he believes in religion for other people: because it makes them more unselfish, I dare say. Yet, in a queer way, George has a pious streak. Perhaps he’s really more religious than I am.—The only thing I have against God is that He’s a man ... not a man, but ... well, Masculine. How can He understand about the special troubles of women? That must be the advantage of being a Catholic, you pray to the Virgin. She can understand. But can She? After all, a Virgin ... I mustn’t let my mind run on like this, it’s revolting the things you find yourself thinking.

From the bay window at the head of the stairs, over the garden and the sweep of grassy hill, she could see the water. Along the curve of shore, a thin crisp of foam edging the tawny sand. If she didn’t get off that letter to Miss Clyde it would be too late for her to come to the Picnic. The Brooks were coming this afternoon. It was Nounou’s evening off, too. What perfect weather. This lovely world, this lovely world. Oh, well, if George wanted the Picnic now, she might as well go through with it.

As she went down, George was in the hall, lighting his pipe. He looked very tall and ruddy and cheerful: almost handsome in his blue linen shirt and flannel trousers. An eddy of smoke rose about his head. She halted on the stairs.

“George! Don’t puff so much smoke. I want to see the top of your head ... I do believe it’s getting thin.”

“How pretty you look,” he said. “I like the green shift.”

He enjoyed calling things by wrong names, and the word shift always amused him. He found words entertaining, a habit that often annoyed her. But this time she did not stop to correct him.

“You ought to wear a rubber cap when you go bathing. The salt water gets your hair all sticky, and then the comb tears it out. I don’t mind your being an atheist, but I’d hate you to be bald.”

He blew a spout of tobacco smoke up at her. It was extraordinarily fragrant. Oh, well, she thought, he’s not a bad old thing. He’s endurable.

“George.” She intended to say, “I love you.” But of their own accord the words changed themselves before they escaped into voice.

“George, do you love me?”

He made his usual unsatisfactory reply. “Well, what do you think?” Of course the proper answer is, “I adore you.” She knew, by now, that he never would make it; probably because he was aware she craved it.

“I’m writing Miss Clyde to come to the Picnic.”

He looked a little awkward.

“Needn’t do that, I wrote to her yesterday. I said you were busy and wanted me to ask her.”

“Well, of all things——”

She curbed herself savagely. She wouldn’t lose her temper. Damn, damn, damn ... his damned impudence.

“When is she coming?”

“I don’t know yet. To-morrow morning, I dare say.”

“Well, then, we’ll have the Picnic to-morrow, get it over with.”

He began to say something, put out his hand, but she brushed fiercely past him and ran into the dining room. She tore her letter into shreds, together with the clean sheet she had brought down. The room was full of a warm irritating buzz.

“George!” she cried angrily, with undeniable command. “Come here and put out this damned bee!”

III

THE kitchen was hot, flies were zigzagging just under the ceiling, swerving silly triangles of ecstasy in the rising savour of roast and sizzling gravy.

“Lizzie, you must keep the screen door latched. There was a big bee in the dining room. That’s how they get in.—Where are the children?”

“It’s that man, he always leaves it open.”

“The ice man? Well, speak to him about it.”

“No, ma’am, the one in the garden. The one Nounou took ’em down to the beach to get away from. She didn’t think he was quite right.”

What on earth was Lizzie talking about?

“A man in the garden? What’s he doing here?”

“I gave him a piece of cake. He saw it in the pantry window and asked for some. Then he was in again for a glass of water.”

Another problem. Life is just one perplexity after another. But there must be some explanation.

“He asked for a piece of cake? Who is he, the gardener?”

Lizzie was flushed with heat and impatience. Her voice rose shrilly.

“He didn’t exactly ask for it, but he was lookin’ in the window at it and he says, ‘They always give me a piece of cake when I want it.’ No, he ain’t the gardener. I don’t know who he is. I thought maybe a friend of yours, one o’ the artists. He was playin’ with the kids.”

She stepped outside, resolutely attempting not to think. Automatically she adjusted the lid of the garbage can. But the mind insists on thinking. Was it better for the can to stand there in the sun, or to go in the cellar entry where it would be cooler? Sunlight is a purifier: the heat would tend to dry the moist refuse ... but the sun attracts flies too. She stooped to lift the can, then paused, abandoned the problem, left it where it was. Just like George to have rented an old-fashioned barracks like this, not even gas for cooking. No wonder the place had stood empty for years and years. The idea of cooking with coal in July. If the oil range didn’t come soon Lizzie would quit, she could see it in her face. The ice box was too small. If they took enough ice to last through the day, there was no room for the ginger-ale bottles. She had known it would be like this.

The garden seemed to sway and tremble in brilliant light. A warm sweetness of flowers floated lightly, the air was not really hot after all. Why did Nounou let the children leave their croquet mallets lying all anyhow about the lawn? Remind George that Nounou’s wages will be due on the twenty-third. If you don’t remind George of those things he complains about being taken by surprise. Beyond the hedge of rose bushes, a blue glimpse of water. It was a heavenly place. There must be some consolation in a garden like this. If one could breathe it in deeply and not think, not think, just slack off the everlasting tension for a few moments. Of course it’s quite useless, but I’m going to pray. God, please help me not to think.... In France, Catholics say vous to God, and Protestants say tu. That’s rather curious.... There, I’m thinking again. No wonder the artists come here in summer, the Island is so lovely. Loafers, that’s what they are, idling about enjoying themselves making pictures while other people plan the details of meals and housekeeping ... and Picnics. She could imagine Miss Clyde sitting in the garden sketching, relishing it all, romping with the children, while she was doing the marketing. Are there enough blankets for the guest-room bed? And with only one bathroom ... Miss Clyde is probably the kind of person who takes a terrible long time over her bath.

The strip of beach gravel that led toward the rose-trellis was warm and crackly underfoot. Among the grey pebbles were small bleached shells. Once upon a time, she had told the children, those shells belonged to snails who lived in the sea. When the tide went out, their little rocky pool got warm and torpid in the glare. Then the sea came back again, crumbling over the ledges with a fresh hoarse noise: great gushes of cold salty water pouring in, waving the seaweeds, waking up the crabs. She could imagine the reviving snails wriggling happily in their spiral cottages, feeling that coolness prickle along their skins. She would like to lie down on the gravel and think about this. Would reality, joy, truth, ever come pouring in on her like that? There was a bench in the rose-garden, if she could get so far. When things are a bit too much for one (fine true old phrase: they are just a little too much for us, adorable torturing things) it’s so strangely comforting to lie flat on sun-warmed earth ... the legend of Antæus ... but not here, Lizzie could see her from that synoptic pantry window. How large a proportion of life consists in heroically denying the impulse? But just round this corner, behind the shrubbery——

Someone was doing it already. Oh, this must be the man Lizzie spoke of. How very odd: sprawled on the gravel, playing with pebbles. Lizzie must have been right, one of the artists. Unconventional, to come into a private garden like that ... asking for a piece of cake. Never be surprised, though, at artists. Perhaps he’s doing a still-life painting: something very modern, a slice of cocoanut cake on a lettuce leaf. Artists (she had a vague idea) enjoyed making pictures of food. But he’d been playing with the children, Lizzie said. What sort of person would play with children before being introduced to their parents? Perhaps he wanted to do a portrait of them. Portraits of children were better done with the mother, who could keep them quiet.... I always think there’s no influence like a mother’s, don’t you?... On the bench in the rose-garden, that would be the place. She could see the picture, reproduced in Vanity Fair ... Green Muslin: Study of Mrs. George Granville and Her Daughters. But even if it were painted at once it couldn’t possibly be printed in a magazine before next—when? January? George would know about that. But strange the man didn’t get up, he must hear her coming. He looked like a gentleman.

“How do you do?” she said, a little coldly.

He was studying the pebbles; at the sound of her voice he twisted and looked up over his shoulder. He seemed faintly shy, yet also entirely composed.

“Hullo!” he said. “I mean, how do you do.” His voice was very gentle. (How different from George.) Something extraordinary about his way of looking at her; what clear hazel eyes. Instead of offering any explanation he seemed waiting for her to say something. She had confidently expected a quick scramble to his feet, a courteous apology for intruding. She felt a little angry at herself for not being able to speak as reprovingly as he deserved. But there was a crumb on his chin, somehow this weakened her. A man who would come into people’s gardens and ask for cake and not even wipe the crumbs off his chin. He must be someone rather special.

“You’re doing just what I wanted to,” she said.

He looked at her, still with that placid inquiry.

“I mean lying on the ground, in the sun.”

“It’s nice,” he said.

Really, of all embarrassing situations. If he didn’t get up, she felt that in another minute she would be sprawling there herself. A very ungraceful pose for the portrait: Mrs. George Granville and Her Daughters, prone on the gravel. Women ought not to lie like that anyway, it humps up the sitting-part so obviously. Yet they always do in bathing suits, most candid of all costumes.... Perhaps for that very reason. What queer contradictions there are in good manners. This was too absurd. Thank goodness, he was getting to his feet. The crumb shone in the sunlight, it adhered to his chin with some of Lizzie’s sticky white icing.

“Was the cake good?” She meant this to be rather cutting, and was pleased to see him look a little frightened.

“Awfully good.” Now he looked hopeful, rather like a dog. She could not altogether understand the queer way he had of studying her: steadily, yet without any of the annoying or alarming intimations that long gazes usually suggest. But he made no movement to leave.

“I suppose you’re waiting for another piece.”

“Yes,” he said, smiling.

Now, she felt, she had him trapped. This would destroy him.

“You haven’t finished the first.”

He understood at once, and ran his tongue toward his chin until it found the crumb. She watched it disappear with the feeling of having lost an ally. She had counted on that crumb to humiliate him with.

“All gone,” he announced gaily. What could one do with a man like that?

“I suppose you’re an artist.” Not knowing what else to do she had turned toward the house, and he was walking with her. He was tall and pleasantly dressed and had rather a nice way of walking: politely tentative, yet with plenty of assurance.

“I’m Martin.”

Her mind made little rushes one way and another, trying to think if she had heard of him. He must be very famous, to give his name with such easy simplicity. Why do I know so little about art? she asked herself. Well, how can I keep up with things, there’s always so much to do. It’s George’s fault, expecting me to run a big house. If we’d gone to the Inn ... what are the names of the famous painters? Sargent was the only one she could think of. She could see George at the pantry window. In a moment she would have to introduce them, what should she say? What was George doing in the pantry?

“George, let that cake alone!” she called. It sounded a pleasant humorous cry, but George’s well-tuned ear caught the undertone of fury. That was just like George. Whenever he was angry or upset he went to the pantry and got himself something to eat.

“I was saving the cake for the Picnic,” she explained.

“A Picnic!” said the stranger. His brown face was bright with interest. “When?”

If George could invite people to the Picnic, why shouldn’t she? By the way, I mustn’t forget to order some sardines.

“Where are you staying?” she asked.

Apparently he didn’t understand this, for he replied, “I don’t mind.” He was looking at the pantry window, where George’s guilty face peered out from behind the wire screen.

“How funny he looks, like a guinea-pig in a cage,” he said.

That was exactly what George did look like, squinting out into the sunshine. The end of his nose, pressed against the mesh, was white and red, like a half-ripe strawberry.

“George, this is Mr. Martin, the famous artist. He’s coming to our Picnic.”

IV

GEORGE was in a fidget, in the little sitting room that opened off the hall. It was just under the stairs and when any one went up or down he could hear the feet and couldn’t help pausing to identify them by the sound. It was astonishing how many footsteps passed along those stairs: and if they ceased for a while it was no better, for he found himself subconsciously waiting for the next and wondering whose they would be. He had laid out his maps and papers and the portable typewriter, all ready to begin work: the draft of his booklet on Summer Tranquillity (for the Eastern Railroad) would soon be due.

His mind was too agitated to compose, but he began clattering a little on the machine, at random, just to give the impression that he was working. Why should any one invent a ‘noiseless’ typewriter, he wondered? The charm of a typewriter was that it did make a noise, a noise that shut out the racket other people were making. What a senseless idea, to imagine that he could really get some work done here, buried in the country. He could not concentrate because there was nothing to concentrate from. There was only the huge vacancy of golden summer, droning pine trees, yawning beaches, the barren pagan earth under a crypt of air. The world shimmered like a pale jewel with a flame of uneasiness at its core. The place to write about Summer Tranquillity would have been that hot secret little office of his in town, where the one window opened like a furnace door into a white blaze of sunshine, where perspiration dripped from his nose on the typewriter keys, but where he had the supreme sensation of intangible solitude.

What on earth were they walking about for, upstairs? Was she showing the man the whole house? He looked distractedly across the garden. The listless beaming of the summer noon lay drowsy upon the lawn, filling him with an appalling sense of his absurd futility. As Phyllis had so often said, he was neither business man nor artist. What the devil was he working for, what goal was there, what fine flamboyant achievement was possible? He had a feeling of being alone against the world, a poor human clown wrestling with grotesque obsessions; and no longer really young.

He leaned toward the glass-paned bookcase, tilting his head anxiously to see the reflection of the top ... certainly it was receding in a V above each temple—but that made the forehead seem higher. He had always believed that, among advertising men, he looked rather more intellectual ... he turned again to the window, a little ashamed of his agitations. Beyond the glass veranda he caught the stolid gaze of the cook at the pantry window. He averted his head quickly: ridiculous that you can’t do anything without catching someone’s eye. All this was just insanity. He took up the page he was working on and rolled it into the typewriter. Page 38 ... like himself, thirty-eight, and forty only two pages away. I suppose that at forty a man feels just as young as ever, but ... it’s absurd to feel as young as I do, at thirty-eight.... Well, I must keep my mind clear (he thought, rather pathetically)—it’s the only capital we have.

Phyllis’s footsteps were coming downstairs. He was always worried when he heard them like that: slow and light, pausing every few treads. That meant she was thinking about something, and in a minute there would be a new problem for him to consider. When he heard them like that he usually rushed into the hall, demanding hotly, “Well, what is it now?”

“What is what?”

“You know I can’t work when you come downstairs like that.”

“Like what?”

“As though you were worrying.”

“Well, why didn’t you take a house where I could slide down the banisters?”

This time the feet came down so slowly he felt sure she wanted him to rush out. The rushing out always put him in the wrong. Well, he just wouldn’t. He would stay where he was, that would show her he was indignant. He took out page 38, put in a blank sheet and rattled the keys vigorously. But he felt cheated of a sensation. He always enjoyed bursting out, through the door at the foot of the stairs, and catching her transfixed on the landing, with the big windows behind her—half frightened, half angry. He would not have told her so, but it was partly because she was so pretty there: the outline of her comely defiant head against the light, her smooth arm emerging from the dainty sleeve that caught and held a pearly brightness. How lovely she is, he thought; it’s gruesome for her to be so pretty and talk such nonsense ... she needs someone to pump her full of indigestible compliments, that would silence her——

She was at the telephone. He could hear her talking to the grocer. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cotswold, is it too late to catch the driver? I’ve got some unexpected guests....”

He hastened into the hall. “Don’t forget the sardines,” he shouted.

She looked at him calmly with the instrument at her mouth. She seemed surprisingly tranquil.

“Never mind, then, thank you,” she said to Mr. Cotswold, in the particularly cordial and gracious voice which (George felt) was meant to emphasize the coolness with which she would now speak to him.

“If you want sardines you’ll have to go down and get them yourself. The driver’s left.”

She went into the sitting room and automatically pulled the blind halfway down. He followed her and raised it to the top of the window again. She sat on the couch, and he was surprised to see a dangerous merriment in her face.

“I suppose you think you can shut yourself in here and just let the house run itself,” she said. “Like a sardine.”

“I have to do my work, don’t I?”

She looked at the sheet in the typewriter, on which was written wildly Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of this absurd family. But she did not comment on it, and George felt that this was one of her moments of genius. He wondered, in alarm, what she was going to do with him next. He felt helpless as only a husband can.

“Well, anyhow, they pack sardines in oil, not in vinegar,” he said angrily. This sounded so silly it made him angrier still. He closed the door and cried in a fierce undertone, “What’s the idea, this man Martin? Who is he? Is he staying for lunch?”

“He’s an artist. I thought you liked artists.”

“Yes, but we don’t have to fill the house with ’em.”

“I’ve put him in the spare room.”

“In the spare room! What about Miss Clyde?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. He seemed to expect it, somehow. He’s a very irresistible person.”

“I guess I can resist him. If we’ve got to have him in the house we can put him in here, on the couch.”

“It’s too late. He’s in the spare room now, washing his hands.—You needn’t have been so rude when I brought him in.”