I know, of course, that the family pity Peter for living in a house
that's all at sixes and sevens, and for not having everything the way he
has been used to having it; and I know they think I keep him from going
to see them all at home, when the truth is--although, as usual, I can't
say it--sometimes I absolutely have to HOUND him to go there; though, of
course, he's awfully fond of them all, and his mother especially; but
he gets dreadfully lazy, and says they're his own people, anyway, and
he can do as he pleases about it. It's their own fault, because they've
always spoiled him. And if they only knew how he hates just that way of
living he's been always used to, with its little, petty cast-iron
rules and regulations, and the stupid family meals, where everybody is
expected to be on time to the minute! My father-in-law pulls out his
chair at the dinner-table exactly as the clock is striking one, and if
any member of the family is a fraction late all the rest are solemn and
strained and nervous until the culprit appears. Peter says the way he
used to suffer--he was NEVER on time.
The menu for each day of the week is as fixed as fate, no matter what
the season of the year: hot roast beef, Sunday; cold roast beef, Monday;
beef-steak, Tuesday; roast mutton, Wednesday; mutton pot-pie, Thursday;
corned beef, Friday; and beef-steak again on Saturday. My father-in-law
never eats fish or poultry, so they only have either if there is
state company. There's one sacred apple pudding that's been made every
Wednesday for nineteen years, and if you can imagine anything more
positively dreadful than that, _I_ can't.
Every time, as soon as we sit down to the table, Grandmother Evarts
always begins, officially:
“Well, Charles Edward, my dear boy, we don't have you here very often
nowadays. I said to your mother yesterday that it was two whole weeks
since you had been to see her. What have you been doing with yourself
lately?”
And when he says, as he always does, “Nothing, grandmother,” I know
she's disappointed, and then she starts in and tells what she has been
doing, and Maria--Maria always manages to be there when we are--Maria
tells what SHE has been doing, with little side digs at me because I
haven't been pickling or preserving or cleaning. Once, when I first
went there, Maria asked me at dinner what days I had for cleaning. And
I said, as innocently as possible, that I hadn't any; that I perfectly
loathed cleaning, and that we never cleaned at home! Of course it wasn't
true, but we never talk about it, anyway. Peter said he nearly shrieked
with joy to hear me come out like that.
It was almost as bad as the time I wore that sweet little yellow Empire
gown. It's a dear, and Lyman Wilde simply raved over it when he
painted me in it (not that he can really paint, but he has a TOUCH with
everything he does). I noticed that everybody seemed solemn and queer,
but I never dreamed that I was the cause until my mother-in-law came to
me afterward, blushing, and told me that Mr. Talbert never allowed any
of the family to wear Mother Hubbards around the house. MOTHER HUBBARDS!
I could have moaned. Well, when I go around there now I never care what
I have on, and I never pretend to talk at meals; I just sit and try and
make my mind a blank until it's over. You HAVE to make your mind a blank
if you don't want to be driven raving crazy by that dining-room. It has
a hideous black-walnut sideboard, an “oil-painting” of pale, bloated
fruit on one side, and pale, bloated fish on the other, and a strip of
black-and-white marbled oil-cloth below.
I feel sometimes as if I could hardly live until my father-in-law rises
from his chair and kisses his wife good-bye before going off to the
factory. She always blushes so prettily when he kisses her--as if it
were for the first time. Then everybody looks pained when Peter and I
just nod at each other as he goes out--I cannot be affectionate to him
before them--and then, thank Heaven! the rest of us escape from the
dining-room.
How Peggy, who has been away from home and seen and done things, can
stand it there now as it is, is a continual wonder to me.
Peggy is a dear little thing. Peter has always been awfully fond of her,
but she doesn't seem to have an idea in her head beyond her clothes and
Harry Goward, though she'll HAVE to have something more to her if she's
going to keep HIM. The moment I saw that boy, of course I knew that he
had the artistic temperament; I've seen so much of it. He's the kind
that's always awfully gloomy until eleven o'clock in the morning, and
has to make love intensely to somebody every evening. What it must have
been to that boy, after indulging in a romantic dream with poor little
earnest, downright Peggy, to wake up and find the engagement taken
seriously not only by her, but by all her relatives--find himself
being welcomed into the family, introduced to them all as a future
member--what it must have been to him I can't imagine! Peggy has no
more temperament than a cow--the combination of Maria and Tom, and
Grandmother Evarts, and Billy with his face washed clean, and Alice with
three enormous bows on her hair, all waiting to welcome him, standing by
the pictorial lamp on the brown worsted mat on the centre-table, made
me fairly howl when I sat at home and thought of it--and that was before
I'd SEEN Harry.
The family were, of course, quite “hurt” that Peter and I wouldn't
assist at the celebration. I cannot see why people WILL want you to do
things when they KNOW you don't care to!
The next evening, however, we had to go, when Peggy herself came around
and asked us. Of course Mr. Goward was with Peggy most of the time.
They certainly looked charming together, but rather conscious and stiff.
Every member of the family was watching his every motion. Oh, I've been
there! I know what it is!
Some of the neighbors were there, too. Peter hardly ever plays on the
big, old-fashioned grand-piano, but that night he was so bored he had
to. The family always THINK they're very musical--you can know the style
when I tell you that after Peter has been rambling through bits from
Schumann and Richard Strauss they always ask him if he won't “play
something.” Well, after Peggy had gone into the other room with her
mother to do the polite to Mrs. Temple, Mr. Goward gravitated over
to where I sat in the big bay-window behind the piano; he had that
“be-good-to-me,-won't-you?” air that I know so well! Then we got to
talking and listening in between whiles--he knows lots of girls in the
Art League--till Peter began playing that heart-breaking “Im Herbst”
from the Franz Songs, and then he said:
“You're going to be my sister, aren't you? Won't you let me hold your
hand while your husband's playing that? It makes me feel so lonely!”