For many years it had been a principle of my life to visit nobody. I had
long since learned that visiting only brings misery. If I got a card or
telegram that said, “Won’t you run up to the Adirondacks and spend the
week-end with us?” I sent back word: “No, not unless the Adirondacks
can run faster than I can,” or words to that effect. If the owner of
a country house wrote to me: “Our man will meet you with a trap any
afternoon that you care to name,” I answered, in spirit at least: “No,
he won’t, not unless he has a bear-trap or one of those traps in which
they catch wild antelope.” If any fashionable lady friend wrote to me
in the peculiar jargon that they use: “Can you give us from July the
twelfth at half-after-three till the fourteenth at four?” I replied:
“Madam, take the whole month, take a year, but leave me in peace.”
Such at least was the spirit of my answers to invitations. In practice
I used to find it sufficient to send a telegram that read: “Crushed with
work impossible to get away,” and then stroll back into the reading-room
of the club and fall asleep again.
But my coming here was my own fault. It resulted from one of those
unhappy moments of expansiveness such as occur, I imagine, to
everybody--moments when one appears to be something quite different
from what one really is, when one feels oneself a thorough good fellow,
sociable, merry, appreciative, and finds the people around one the
same. Such moods are known to all of us. Some people say that it is the
super-self asserting itself. Others say it is from drinking. But let
it pass. That at any rate was the kind of mood that I was in when I met
Beverly-Jones and when he asked me here.
It was in the afternoon, at the club. As I recall it, we were drinking
cocktails and I was thinking what a bright, genial fellow Beverly-Jones
was, and how completely I had mistaken him. For myself--I admit it--I
am a brighter, better man after drinking two cocktails than at any other
time--quicker, kindlier, more genial. And higher, morally. I had been
telling stories in that inimitable way that one has after two cocktails.
In reality, I only know four stories, and a fifth that I don’t quite
remember, but in moments of expansiveness they feel like a fund or flow.
It was under such circumstances that I sat with Beverly-Jones. And it
was in shaking hands at leaving that he said: “I _do_ wish, old chap,
that you could run up to our summer place and give us the whole of
August!” and I answered, as I shook him warmly by the hand: “My _dear_
fellow, I’d simply _love_ to!” “By gad, then it’s a go!” he said. “You
must come up for August, and wake us all up!”
Wake them up! Ye gods! Me wake them up!
One hour later I was repenting of my folly, and wishing, when I thought
of the two cocktails, that the prohibition wave could be hurried up so
as to leave us all high and dry--bone-dry, silent and unsociable.
Then I clung to the hope that Beverly-Jones would forget. But no. In due
time his wife wrote to me. They were looking forward so much, she said,
to my visit; they felt--she repeated her husband’s ominous phrase--that
I should wake them all up!
What sort of alarm-clock did they take me for, anyway!
Ah, well! They know better now. It was only yesterday afternoon that
Beverly-Jones found me standing here in the gloom of some cedar-trees
beside the edge of the pond and took me back so quietly to the house
that I realized he thought I meant to drown myself. So I did.
I could have stood it better--my coming here, I mean--if they hadn’t
come down to the station in a body to meet me in one of those long
vehicles with seats down the sides: silly-looking men in coloured
blazers and girls with no hats, all making a hullabaloo of welcome. “We
are quite a small party,” Mrs. Beverly-Jones had written. Small! Great
heavens, what would they call a large one? And even those at the station
turned out to be only half of them. There were just as many more all
lined up on the piazza of the house as we drove up, all waving a fool
welcome with tennis rackets and golf clubs.
Small party, indeed! Why, after six days there are still some of the
idiots whose names I haven’t got straight! That fool with the fluffy
moustache, which is he? And that jackass that made the salad at the
picnic yesterday, is he the brother of the woman with the guitar, or
who?
But what I mean is, there is something in that sort of noisy welcome
that puts me to the bad at the start. It always does. A group of
strangers all laughing together, and with a set of catchwords and jokes
all their own, always throws me into a fit of sadness, deeper than
words. I had thought, when Mrs. Beverly-Jones said a _small_ party,
she really meant small. I had had a mental picture of a few sad people,
greeting me very quietly and gently, and of myself, quiet, too, but
cheerful--somehow lifting them up, with no great effort, by my mere
presence.
Somehow from the very first I could feel that Beverly-Jones was
disappointed in me. He said nothing. But I knew it. On that first
afternoon, between my arrival and dinner, he took me about his place, to
show it to me. I wish that at some proper time I had learned just what
it is that you say when a man shows you about his place. I never
knew before how deficient I am in it. I am all right to be shown an
iron-and-steel plant, or a soda-water factory, or anything really
wonderful, but being shown a house and grounds and trees, things that I
have seen all my life, leaves me absolutely silent.
“These big gates,” said Beverly-Jones, “we only put up this year.”
“Oh,” I said. That was all. Why shouldn’t they put them up this year? I
didn’t care if they’d put them up this year or a thousand years ago.
“We had quite a struggle,” he continued, “before we finally decided on
sandstone.
“You did, eh?” I said. There seemed nothing more to say; I didn’t
know what sort of struggle he meant, or who fought who; and personally
sandstone or soapstone or any other stone is all the same to me.
“This lawn,” said Beverly-Jones, “we laid down the first year we were
here.” I answered nothing. He looked me right in the face as he said it
and I looked straight back at him, but I saw no reason to challenge his
statement. “The geraniums along the border,” he went on, “are rather an
experiment. They’re Dutch.”
I looked fixedly at the geraniums but never said a word. They were
Dutch; all right, why not? They were an experiment. Very good; let them
be so. I know nothing in particular to say about a Dutch experiment.
I could feel that Beverly-Jones grew depressed as he showed me round.
I was sorry for him, but unable to help. I realized that there were
certain sections of my education that had been neglected. How to be
shown things and make appropriate comments seems to be an art in itself.
I don’t possess it. It is not likely now, as I look at this pond, that I
ever shall.
Yet how simple a thing it seems when done by others. I saw the
difference at once the very next day, the second day of my visit, when
Beverly-Jones took round young Poppleton, the man that I mentioned above
who will presently give a Swiss yodel from a clump of laurel bushes to
indicate that the day’s fun has begun.
Poppleton I had known before slightly. I used to see him at the club.
In club surroundings he always struck me as an ineffable young ass, loud
and talkative and perpetually breaking the silence rules. Yet I have
to admit that in his summer flannels and with a straw hat on he can do
things that I can’t.
“These big gates,” began Beverly-Jones as he showed Poppleton round the
place with me trailing beside them, “we only put up this year.”
Poppleton, who has a summer place of his own, looked at the gates very
critically.
“Now, do you know what _I’d_ have done with those gates, if they were
mine?” he said.
“No,” said Beverly-Jones.
“I’d have set them two feet wider apart; they’re too narrow, old chap,
too narrow.” Poppleton shook his head sadly at the gates.
“We had quite a struggle,” said Beverly-Jones, “before we finally
decided on sandstone.”
I realized that he had one and the same line of talk that he always
used. I resented it. No wonder it was easy for him. “Great mistake,”
said Poppleton. “Too soft. Look at this”--here he picked up a big stone
and began pounding at the gate-post--“see how easily it chips! Smashes
right off. Look at that, the whole corner knocks right off, see!”
Beverly-Jones entered no protest. I began to see that there is a sort of
understanding, a kind of freemasonry, among men who have summer places.
One shows his things; the other runs them down, and smashes them. This
makes the whole thing easy at once. Beverly-Jones showed his lawn.
“Your turf is all wrong, old boy,” said Poppleton. “Look! it has no body
to it. See, I can kick holes in it with my heel. Look at that, and that!
If I had on stronger boots I could kick this lawn all to pieces.”
“These geraniums along the border,” said Beverly-Jones, “are rather an
experiment. They’re Dutch.”
“But my dear fellow,” said Poppleton, “you’ve got them set in wrongly.
They ought to slope _from_ the sun you know, never _to_ it. Wait a
bit”--here he picked up a spade that was lying where a gardener had been
working--“I’ll throw a few out. Notice how easily they come up. Ah, that
fellow broke! They’re apt to. There, I won’t bother to reset them, but
tell your man to slope them over from the sun. That’s the idea.”
Beverly-Jones showed his new boat-house next and Poppleton knocked a
hole in the side with a hammer to show that the lumber was too thin.
“If that were _my_ boat-house,” he said, “I’d rip the outside clean off
it and use shingle and stucco.”
It was, I noticed, Poppleton’s plan first to imagine Beverly-Jones’s
things his own, and then to smash them, and then give them back smashed
to Beverly-Jones. This seemed to please them both. Apparently it is a
well-understood method of entertaining a guest and being entertained.
Beverly-Jones and Poppleton, after an hour or so of it, were delighted
with one another.
Yet somehow, when I tried it myself, it failed to work.
“Do you know what I would do with that cedar summer-house if it was
mine?” I asked my host the next day.
“No,” he said.
“I’d knock the thing down and burn it,” I answered.
But I think I must have said it too fiercely. Beverly-Jones looked hurt
and said nothing.
Not that these people are not doing all they can for me. I know that.
I admit it. If I _should_ meet my end here and if--to put the thing
straight out--_my_ lifeless body is found floating on the surface of
this pond, I should like there to be documentary evidence of _that_
much. They are trying their best. “This is Liberty Hall,” Mrs.
Beverly-Jones said to me on the first day of my visit. “We want you to
feel that you are to do absolutely as you like!”
Absolutely as I like! How little they know me. I should like to have
answered: “Madam, I have now reached a time of life when human society
at breakfast is impossible to me; when any conversation prior to eleven
a.m. must be considered out of the question; when I prefer to eat my
meals in quiet, or with such mild hilarity as can be got from a comic
paper; when I can no longer wear nankeen pants and a coloured blazer
without a sense of personal indignity; when I can no longer leap and
play in the water like a young fish; when I do not yodel, cannot sing
and, to my regret; dance even worse than I did when young; and when the
mood of mirth and hilarity comes to me only as a rare visitant--shall
we say at a burlesque performance--and never as a daily part of my
existence. Madam, I am unfit to be a summer guest. If this is Liberty
Hall indeed, let me, oh, let me go!”
Such is the speech that I would make if it were possible. As it is, I
can only rehearse it to myself.
Indeed, the more I analyse it the more impossible it seems, for a man of
my temperament at any rate, to be a summer guest. These people, and,
I imagine, all other summer people, seem to be trying to live in a
perpetual joke. Everything, all day, has to be taken in a mood of
uproarious fun.
However, I can speak of it all now in quiet retrospect and without
bitterness. It will soon be over now. Indeed, the reason why I have come
down at this early hour to this quiet water is that things have reached
a crisis. The situation has become extreme and I must end it.
It happened last night. Beverly-Jones took me aside while the others
were dancing the fox-trot to the victrola on the piazza.
“We’re planning to have some rather good fun to-morrow night,” he said,
“something that will be a good deal more in your line than a lot of it,
I’m afraid, has been up here. In fact, my wife says that this will be
the very thing for you.”
“Oh,” I said.
“We’re going to get all the people from the other houses over and
the girls”--this term Beverly-Jones uses to mean his wife and her
friends--“are going to get up a sort of entertainment with charades and
things, all impromptu, more or less, of course--”
“Oh,” I said. I saw already what was coming.
“And they want you to act as a sort of master-of-ceremonies, to make up
the gags and introduce the different stunts and all that. I was telling
the girls about that afternoon at the club, when you were simply killing
us all with those funny stories of yours, and they’re all wild over it.”
“Wild?” I repeated.
“Yes, quite wild over it. They say it will be the hit of the summer.”
Beverly-Jones shook hands with great warmth as we parted for the
night. I knew that he was thinking that my character was about to be
triumphantly vindicated, and that he was glad for my sake.
Last night I did not sleep. I remained awake all night thinking of the
“entertainment.” In my whole life I have done nothing in public except
once when I presented a walking-stick to the vice-president of our club
on the occasion of his taking a trip to Europe. Even for that I used
to rehearse to myself far into the night sentences that began: “This
walking-stick, gentleman, means far more than a mere walking-stick.”
And now they expect me to come out as a merry master-of-ceremonies
before an assembled crowd of summer guests.
But never mind. It is nearly over now. I have come down to this quiet
water in the early morning to throw myself in. They will find me
floating here among the lilies. Some few will understand. I can see it
written, as it will be, in the newspapers.
“What makes the sad fatality doubly poignant is that the unhappy victim
had just entered upon a holiday visit that was to have been prolonged
throughout the whole month. Needless to say, he was regarded as the life
and soul of the pleasant party of holiday makers that had gathered at
the delightful country home of Mr. and Mrs. Beverly-Jones. Indeed, on
the very day of the tragedy, he was to have taken a leading part in
staging a merry performance of charades and parlour entertainments--a
thing for which his genial talents and overflowing high spirits rendered
him specially fit.”
When they read that, those who know me best will understand how and why
I died. “He had still over three weeks to stay there,” they will say.
“He was to act as the stage manager of charades.” They will shake their
heads. They will understand.
But what is this? I raise my eyes from the paper and I see Beverly-Jones
hurriedly approaching from the house. He is hastily dressed, with
flannel trousers and a dressing-gown. His face looks grave. Something
has happened. Thank God, something has happened. Some accident! Some
tragedy! Something to prevent the charades!
I write these few lines on a fast train that is carrying me back to New
York, a cool, comfortable train, with a deserted club-car where I can
sit in a leather arm-chair, with my feet up on another, smoking, silent,
and at peace.
Villages, farms and summer places are flying by. Let them fly. I, too,
am flying--back to the rest and quiet of the city.
“Old man,” Beverly-Jones said, as he laid his hand on mine very
kindly--he is a decent fellow, after all, is Jones--“they’re calling you
by long-distance from New York.”
“What is it?” I asked, or tried to gasp.
“It’s bad news, old chap; fire in your office last evening. I’m afraid
a lot of your private papers were burned. Robinson--that’s your senior
clerk, isn’t it?--seems to have been on the spot trying to save things.
He’s badly singed about the face and hands. I’m afraid you must go at
once.”
“Yes, yes,” I said, “at once.”
“I know. I’ve told the man to get the trap ready right away. You’ve just
time to catch the seven-ten. Come along.”
“Right,” I said. I kept my face as well as I could, trying to hide
my exultation. The office burnt! Fine! Robinson’s singed! Glorious!
I hurriedly packed my things and whispered to Beverly-Jones farewell
messages for the sleeping household. I never felt so jolly and facetious
in my life. I could feel that Beverly-Jones was admiring the spirit and
pluck with which I took my misfortune. Later on he would tell them all
about it.
The trap ready! Hurrah! Good-bye, old man! Hurrah! All right. I’ll
telegraph. Right you are, good-bye. Hip, hip, hurrah! Here we are! Train
right on time. Just these two bags, porter, and there’s a dollar for
you. What merry, merry fellows these darky porters are, anyway!
And so here I am in the train, safe bound for home and the summer quiet
of my club.
Well done for Robinson! I was afraid that it had missed fire, or that my
message to him had gone wrong. It was on the second day of my visit that
I sent word to him to invent an accident--something, anything--to call
me back. I thought the message had failed. I had lost hope. But it is
all right now, though he certainly pitched the note pretty high.
Of course I can’t let the Beverly-Joneses know that it was a put-up job.
I must set fire to the office as soon as I get back. But it’s worth it.
And I’ll have to singe Robinson about the face and hands. But it’s worth
that too!