Boys and Girls Come Out to Play (13 page)

“Sounds like crazy reasoning to me,” said her son, sneering, but apparently a little frightened. “May I leave the table now, please?”

“You’ve only just this minute sat down.”

“O.K. Have it your way.” He shrugged, and in a bored way began to arrange his cutlery in patterns.

By now the secretary, because she too was feeling queasy at so much sharp talk, was a little ashamed of her behaviour in the last twenty-four hours; but she could not suppress, far down inside, a thrill of excitement, and a hope that the fight would break out again. It did, almost immediately. Without warning, Morgan glared at his mother and shouted: “D’you know I’m nearly eighteen? You don’t seem to know! Eighteen!”

“I know it very well, Jimmy,” replied his mother calmly. “I
also know that there are special circumstances, though I don’t at all like to remind you of them.”

He continued to glare, breathing loudly. “You treat Granf the same way at eighty,” he shouted.

The old man was taken aback by this and waved trembling fingers in the air. “Now, James …” he pleaded in a quavering voice, looking nervously at his daughter.

“Well, doesn’t she?” demanded his grandson.

“When I was eighteen, now let me see …” began the old man.

“Father, there is entirely no need for you to say anything at all,” said Mrs. Morgan sharply.

“See!” cried her son. “You shut
him
up too.”

“Jimmy, Jimmy!” cried Mrs. Morgan. “What a terrible way to talk!”

“What a terrible way to live is what I mean!” he retorted.

Mrs. Morgan set her lips, and gave the secretary a quick look, ashamed that an outsider should be witnessing such a scene. But the secretary’s eyes were cast down modestly; her face was expressionless—and, changing her tactics suddenly, Mrs. Morgan looked pleadingly at her son. He looked back with contempt. “Her?” he said savagely, and then, suddenly coldly polite once more: “May I leave the table
now
? Please?”

“Indeed you may,” said his mother.

When lunch was over, Mrs. Morgan said to the secretary: “I think an afternoon off wouldn’t hurt either of us. First, though, will you read me the week’s engagements?”

The secretary read: “30 Million Koreans’ Luncheon, Biltmore twelve-thirty Tuesday; Wednesday, Editorial Lunch, and five o’clock meet Mr. Horace Sweeney of Texas Land Holdings; Friday, noon, meeting of War Against Wars Council, evening at eight-thirty Shostakovich Concert—or should it be concerto?—by the Orchestra of the United Automobile Workers. That’s all in New York.”

“I want you to cancel them all.”

“Every one?”

“Yes. Write a very nice, polite note, if you please, Peggy, and of course enclose cheques for the seats just the same.”

At dinner, mother and son did not exchange a word. Morgan spent most of this hour looking at the opposite wall. Sometimes his eyes would film over in the usual helpless, apathetic way; but mostly they were hot and angry, and the bones of his face were as prominent as if they were being forced out of the skin. Mrs. Morgan, on the other hand, wore the look of a person who scarcely dares to bend or look a fraction to one side or another for fear of being fatally distracted and overrun. She was incapable even of sneaking a glance at her son’s face—which she was desperately tempted to do.

“Fireworks coming soon, I guess,” said the secretary afterwards to the tutor. “She must know the brat’s going to do something awful or she wouldn’t have cancelled her precious engagements.”

“How long has her husband been dead?” asked the tutor.

“I think fifteen years. Why?”

“I just wondered.” Rather nervously, the tutor went on to say that without a husband or a son going through certain stated paces, and appearing, in his trousers, at stated hours, remaining visible to the corner of her eye even when out of sight, Mrs. Morgan might feel that even the simplest gesture was beyond her power and interest. There were women like that, he said, very active women who didn’t
want
a man but had to have one.

“You would think that, of course,” said the secretary.

“It was only an idea that crossed my mind.”

“It has the real stink of masculine superiority, even so.”

The tutor looked sheepishly at the prim, pretty face of his loved one, now filled with sullen dislike; and when he saw, as usual, how admirably made she was, with such long and
perfect legs, and curves that had the finished look of cloverleaf intersections on a concrete highway, it seemed as plain as day to him that no woman really needed to take any serious interest in so clumsy and timid a thing as a man. He wondered why women had never invented some romantic machine that would do as well as a man—say, an adjustable cigar-store Indian.

For the next few days a long silence fell over the household—a silence so deep that during meals the least scrape of knives and forks sounded overloud, and it was embarrassing to hear the babbling and laughing that came from the cook and the maids in the kitchen. It never occurred to the secretary that she was witnessing one of the most critical occasions in her employer’s life; she thought it inexplicable that in a few days Mrs. Morgan had changed from an incessantly active, decisive woman into a strained, uninteresting creature who let her secretary compose her letters as she pleased and made more or less the same spiritless reply when her editor telephoned questions from New York: “If you think that is best, by all means. I leave it entirely to you.”

“But I’ll bet she doesn’t give up,” said the secretary to the tutor. “I bet he doesn’t go.”

As the silence tightened around the house, so did the movements of the people in it become not more escapeful but more circumscribed. Once a day the secretary drove the station-waggon into the village and did a few commissions; otherwise the cars remained in the garages, so that the estate paths and driveways appeared to come to an abrupt end when they arrived at the park fences. Mrs. Morgan sat in the library a large part of the day, or in the summerhouse; occasionally she dragged herself to the kitchen-garden and exchanged a few words with the head-gardener.

Her son no longer climbed the mountain, or even went outside the grounds; all at once his behaviour became so peculiar
that the household was amazed. He appeared at all meals exactly on time, ate well of each course, and left, with irreproachable correctness, only when his mother rose. Between meals he dragged a long canvas chair across the lawn, set it up under one of the maples and read books. At the end of the day he was careful to drag the chair back to the house, in case it got rained on, something he had never bothered to do before. If his mother addressed him, offering him a chop or more string beans, he bowed almost from the waist, and passed his plate in a most courteous way. Only when she asked him if he was being sure to take his medicine twice a day—a question she had asked him twice a week for many years—did he appear simply not to have heard such a silly question. He went to bed, as the doctor had always advised but without much result, as soon as the living-room clock chimed eleven. He observed the precaution of taking his bath in only three inches of lukewarm water (exactly three; it might have been done with a measuring stick), instead of wilfully filling it to the brim and wallowing in a thick and boiling steam; after the bath he scrubbed away the brown scum at dirt-level
instead
of leaving it to cake for the maid. He spent a full day straightening up his room, and even tidied up the drawers that he never let anyone touch, and which were full of old
notebooks
, sneakers and phonograph records. He no longer sank into chairs and threw his legs over the arms; he sat upright, and ceased, while reading, to pick his nose and ears. His passage through the rooms and corridors was stately: he walked with his shoulders back and his head tilted somewhat higher than usual, in the manner of a promising student in a theological seminary. He did small, but thoughtful, things to help the maids, the cook, the chauffeur, and even the secretary; above all, he showed a new interest in his grandfather, and could be seen with a hand cupped under the old gentleman’s elbow, helping him over a rough spot, or gently arranging the
hood of his deck chair to prevent too much sunlight from falling on the weak old eyes. Without prompting from his mother, he went to the tutor, apologized for his former
behaviour
, and resumed his daily lessons, noting down the tutor’s words carefully in a book and writing calm and thoughtful compositions. He had always looked rather sick and miserable, but now his air was so grave and decent, so much a model of an honest, socially-minded person, that one might have thought him the victim of some terrible abnormality.

“Are you sure you feel all right?” his mother asked him nervously. His answer was a courteous smile, which seemed to overlie a rich inner feeling of tolerance. The same afternoon, he brought the secretary a bunch of spring wildflowers. In the evening he spoke with good sense about an aspect of Russo-German relations.

“I think you and I have behaved pretty shabbily about Jimmy,” the secretary told the tutor very coldly that night. “I know plenty of people who are supposed to be normal and haven’t an ounce of Jimmy’s natural decency. When you think of the handicaps the kid’s had to overcome, it’s a wonder that he can come out of it like this.”

“I always said I thought he was intelligent.”

“Yes, but it was the way you said it … It annoyed me even at the time, but I was a coward, and I was afraid you’d sneer if I defended him.”

“Honey, I’d never sneer at you.”

“I often feel you do, subconsciously. I know I’m not an intellectual.”

“I know there is a cynical part of me,” said the tutor, “I thought I managed to keep it under … Do you know, I never respect and love you more than when you come out so frankly and admit to being ashamed of something? It makes me realize how cheap I am myself.”

“Well, don’t let’s start grovelling.”

A cold air of penance moved through the big house and followed its occupants in their walks through the grounds. It was noticeable only in the form which made it least recognizable—in a decorum that eliminated any strong personal disagreements or advances and encouraged a punctilio of over-amiable conversation and incessant toleration. The tutor took every chance he got of eating his meals in the big house, as though he were suddenly frightened of being alone. Mrs. Morgan managed to talk very little, but she became paler every day and her fingers, when she ate, trembled with confusion. The maids spoke in much lower voices and appeared uneasy. Morgan was by all odds the most at ease; he talked freely and naturally as though he were fond of every one; sometimes he laughed so heartily, as bishops do, that the others regarded him with nervous smiles. His grandfather was the most puzzled of the company: sensing trouble in the air, he ceased to speak at all, and crouched over his food like a cat. Once, he suddenly raised his head and cried, in a hysterical, querulous voice: “What goes on here? Is there something I’ve not been told?”

Soon after, Mrs. Morgan put on a pair of old grey flannel slacks, took a heavy walking-stick and spent most of an afternoon out walking. That night, when her son was reading in bed, she knocked on his door and pulled a chair up beside him. She was more apprehensive than he had ever known her to be before. She said:

“Jimmy, dear, I want to thank you very much for the way you’ve been behaving lately. I’m sure I’ve never known you so co-operative and controlled. You seem like quite another person.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I suppose I’m finding interests. But I haven’t noticed any change myself.”

“Why, it’s hardly believable!” She gave a little laugh, and
went on: “When I was out walking today I was thinking to myself that I must often have seemed a very dogmatic, difficult sort of mother to you.”

He said nothing.

“I know I have often been too much of a disciplinarian, even though I’ve known discipline is no good unless it draws the person closer to one.”

He gave her a surprised, suspicious look.

“I felt a little bit ashamed of myself today, Jimmy.”

For a moment it seemed that he was inclined to reassure her; but he still said nothing.

“What I think I ought to tell you, just in case you don’t realize,” she said, “is that I’m not like that—so much of a martinet—without any reason. I often wonder if you have any idea of what agonies I go through when I think of you’re being ill, or when I see you ill. Every morning when I wake up, the first thing I think about is if you are going to come down to breakfast; every minute that you’re late makes me want to run upstairs and see, I feel so tortured. Each time you go up that mountain alone, I think of you’re falling and being smothered or bitten by a snake. I
have
to always be asking you about taking your medicine, because even if it doesn’t seem to do you much good, I just can’t bear to think of how much worse you might be without it. If I don’t do these things, no one else is going to; a girl like Peggy is a hard little thing, really, and your grandfather always thinks everything just runs by itself. When your father was alive, I wasn’t the kind of person I am now; if he had lived he would be responsible for you too. Sometimes I don’t think you know how many things I keep from you and how much I try to make you free of anything that would make your life even more difficult. I shouldn’t even talk to you this way, I know, if it’s going to upset you; but I do feel you should know these things; you’re not a boy any more. I also realize that no
matter how bad your health is, you can’t just go on staying here indefinitely—but I truly believe you shouldn’t do anything about going away for another year—or two. We could try and do something about college as well, if we could only find someone who could teach you enough to get you there; we could choose a college that’s near, perhaps.”

At this, he flushed and started to pick at the bedclothes, avoiding his mother’s eye, as though he knew very well that his only hope was not to recognize that there was any appeal to his heart in her confession.

“Or do you have any ideas of your own about it?” she asked, becoming bolder.