Boys and Girls Come Out to Play (12 page)

The secretary turned crimson with humiliation.

“I think we’d better leave the table,” said Mrs. Morgan, getting up and walking out.

After a half-hour of private indignation the secretary put on her coat, left the grounds by the wicket gate and walked up the dark lane to the tutor’s cabin. He was sitting on the little screened porch, apparently writing, and when he looked up and saw the secretary step out of the darkness into the lamplight he pushed away his papers and eagerly let her in. When the secretary looked at his earnest face with its pale sunburn and silly edge of beard, she found it degrading that she should have to come to him for comfort. “Did I interrupt your doodling?” she said sarcastically, sitting down in his chair.

He collapsed immediately. “I’m getting along, but much too slowly,” he said nervously. “I must work more; I must get
down to things; no one’s to blame but me if I don’t. Some of my trouble is that I don’t belong in any particular
school
—of thought, I mean. I am influenced of course, but I cannot step directly into any cultural tradition: there is nothing in America from which I feel that I emerge, that I inherit.”

“Perhaps your cultural tradition is to make a career out of talking that way. You men get all the breaks.”

“Yes, I guess we do, really,” he said, apologetically but with a timid pipe of pride. “Society is still basically masculine.”

“How I hate women!” said the secretary.

“Oh, come now!” he said, waving his hands in trepidation.

“Yes, I do. I’ll never work for one again. They never miss a chance to stab you in the back. They’re always thwarted.” She gave him her version of the evening’s events.

“That’s too bad, Peggy,” he said sadly. He hesitated, and then said: “I hope you realize that I have a most deep and real respect for you as an individual. I hope you never think that I just look on you as a woman in the sense of a sexual outlet. I have a really profound feeling for you as a whole—for you as you.”

“Thank you for putting a nickel under the saucer; but my pay-check comes from Mrs. Morgan, not you.”

“I’ve often thought,” said the tutor, gathering a little courage, “that if I could have an easy, informal talk with the old dame I could set her right on one or two things. But neither of them even
listens
.
Do you know, time and again I’ve said the simplest sort of sentence to the boy and found that half a minute later he has no memory of it—no memory at all, not the smallest idea. They’re set in that big house with all those lawns and trees and they have no idea whatsoever of what’s real; they don’t want to be told, what’s more.”

“I think you’ve got something there,” said the secretary, feeling a little better and looking at the tutor even with a trace of respect.

“An almost schizophrenic withdrawal from life,” he said, growing more confident. “The invitations to country luncheons are most significant. Reality appears for a few hours every Sunday and is then dismissed again to New York. All her business, all his vagueness, though apparently opposite, are in fact identical as fantasy.”

“Well, let’s just not talk about it any more,” said the secretary. She went to examine a bug on the screen—a roundabout way of being able to stop in front of the tutor on her way back and pat his cheek without any loss of face. “You look nice today,” she said.

He seized her hand. “Do you think I ought to shave off my beard?”

“I don’t see why,” she said, mounting his lap. “It’ll look all right once it starts showing.”

He gave her a furry kiss. “Here’s what I’ve been thinking,” he said. The secretary closed her eyes and laid her head on his shoulder. “My work, of course, has to come first, as any man’s does. But I hope to be able to sell the piece I’m working on now—I won’t
really
get anything for it, and don’t expect to—but say for $35. Then, I have good reason to believe that I’ll be getting another $25 for that translation I got a letter about yesterday. That makes $60. Then, my father’s pretty sure to cash in for my birthday next month. What I thought was that sometime in July we might go off somewhere together: I know a place in the Catskills where the scenery is completely beautiful. You could swim, and we could take walks; we could walk for miles there without ever setting eyes on anyone except ourselves.”

“Let’s not think too far ahead,” said the secretary. “It spoils the present somehow.”

“Jesus, you feel good,” said the tutor.

“Take me inside and make me feel gooder,” said the secretary, keeping her eyes closed and trying to pretend that she
was in the arms of a certain man named George. He picked her up and stumbled, puffing, toward the bedroom.

*

Mrs. Morgan and the secretary both looked tired at breakfast next morning. They ate on the sunporch, which looked out on the stone bridge: over the splashing of the electric percolator they could hear the brook boiling its way over the artificial waterfalls. The secretary’s slacks were baby-blue; a ribbon of the same colour was tied over her hair. Mrs. Morgan wore black slacks, embroidered with golden Chinese dragons; her toe-nails were lacquered and showed out of wooden-soled, Malayan sandals. She read the
Herald-Tribune
; the secretary read the
Times;
later, they would exchange.

Halfway through breakfast, Mrs. Morgan began to fidget. “Please Rosa; go up to his room; don’t say anything; just knock, and say ‘Breakfast is ready.’”

The maid came back and reported that the room was empty. “Did you look in the bathroom?” asked Mrs. Morgan, rising and turning pale.

“Yes, ma’am. The door’s open and he’s not in there.”

“Thank you, Rosa.” Mrs. Morgan sat down again; the colour came back to her face. She lit a cigarette, crossed her legs in a mannish way, and in a slow thoughtful voice began to spell out the day’s work, the secretary writing it on a pad. But after only a few minutes she began to fidget again, and groped under the table with her sandal for the bell-button.

“Rosa, do you know if he went out? He’s not usually out of the house at this hour.”

“I’ll ask around, ma’am.”

“I’m afraid I get too nervous,” said Mrs. Morgan, looking hopefully at the secretary.

The secretary refused to sympathize; her dignity was still offended.

“He seems to be out, ma’am,” said the maid. “He was down early….”

“Oh, he
was
down; you’re quite sure?”

“Oh, sure, ma’am; he was down and went to the kitchen and squeezed some oranges, and Marian says he had coffee and toast and a bite of cereal.”

“Oh, thank you, Rosa; that’s just what I wanted to know. But he didn’t say anything about where he was going…? Well, that’s not so important as the other. All right, Peggy, let us return to our muttons.”

The screen-door opened and Mrs. Morgan’s father came in, his fingers clasped ahead of him as though he were trying to crack a hard nut. He had reached an age when he no longer appeared to be built to scale; he always looked slovenly, even though he wore a stiff white collar and jazzy tie on the hottest day. “The thermometer fell below 65 degrees all through the night,” he said. He had an old man’s proud, paternal appreciation of nature.

“Father, what do you intend doing today?”

“Doing? Today?”

“I mean, are you going to want the car, and, if so, when?”

The old man rubbed one cheek slowly, and said: “I
had
thought of seeing Waters.”

“Well, that means driving to Pigot. What time do you plan to go, and how long will you stay with him?”

“… But I recall this isn’t his day.”

“You mean you’re not going, then?”

“I don’t think so. Not if I won’t find him. No point to that.”

“Then you’ll be here for lunch?”

“Surely; I’m always here for lunch.” He smiled at his daughter, who was beginning to twitch, with benign amusement.

“And this afternoon?”

“I might take a turn.”

“You mean, not with the car?”

“No, not with the car.”

“Then you won’t want the car all day?”

“That’s right. I’ll always say if I want it.”

“But that’s the trouble, you scarcely ever do say. Then when you ask for it it’s not there.”

“I’ll settle myself in the arbour, I think.”

“The arbour. Not the summerhouse, because Peggy and I will work there, I think; it’s such a beautiful day.”

“Then, maybe, I’ll stay on my porch.”

“Father, I said the arbour would be all right. You don’t have to stay inside on a day like this.”

“It’s not going to stay this way for ever,” said her father, blinking up at the sky as at a child he knew well.

The secretary followed Mrs. Morgan to the summerhouse and set up the portable typewriter on the cracked, uneven table. There were spider-webs in the open eaves, and tiny ants were building a moated grange in one of the corners. The secretary began to sweat prettily at the arm-pits as she worked the typewriter; Mrs. Morgan dictated from a long rattan chair, fingering a twig. Toward the middle of the morning she became restless and went out on to the lawn, calling, “Rosa, Rosa!” in a high voice.

“Yes, ma’am; I’m coming.”

“He’s not back by any chance?”

“No; I’ve kept an eye for him, Mrs. Morgan.”

“You’ll tell me?”

“Right away if I see him.”

“I wish I could stop being such a worrier,” said Mrs. Morgan, returning to the summerhouse and smiling ruefully. “I keep thinking of that mountain. It’s really no place for him to be. If anything happened you could search for hours.”

“Yes, I guess you could,” said the secretary.

At noon the secretary went inside. As she crossed the lawn
she gave a secret signal with her hand. The tutor, who had been hiding behind an elm, then joined Mrs. Morgan in the summerhouse. “You look well, Mr. Petty,” she said. “Yes, thank you; now that the warm weather …” he said.

After a pause he began to speak again. “It struck me again last night, Mrs. Morgan, that, well …”

“What do you say struck you, Mr. Petty?”

“It struck me, how shall I say, the thought, struck me again, what a shame that young Jimmy shouldn’t be able to get more out of his instruction….”

“We always let a few days go by after he’s had an attack, Mr. Petty. It’s impossible for him to work.”

“Yes, I meant, though, when he actually
is
working. To be honest, Mrs. Morgan, I really am fond of the boy. I think he’s most intelligent; he shows great originality; underneath, there’s even a good deal of eagerness, a real vitality. If that spring is not being tapped, so to speak, there’s no doubt it’s my responsibility; it’s up to me to find specific ways and means by which the dormant faculty can be, ah, made not dormant. The boy is clever; his heart is good; his penetration is often alarming….”

“Mr. Petty,” said Mrs. Morgan in a vague, uninterested way, “if what’s worrying you is whether you will be able to keep the cabin if Jimmy goes to Colorado, I can assure you it will be all right. And your salary remains unchanged, of course, by any absences caused by his being sick.”

The maid came out on the lawn ringing a bell. “Would you like lunch with us, Mr. Petty?” “Thank you, no, very much,” he said, looking ashamed. “I’ve got a soup-cube boiling up right now.”

Mrs. Morgan, her father, and her secretary sat down to the table. “Where is my wayward son?” asked Mrs. Morgan. The old man polished off his special soup, and only then looked up as though he had known all along that something was missing,
and said: “Where’s the boy?” “He went for a good long walk, it seems,” said the secretary—the silence was getting on her nerves. Mrs. Morgan held her head low over the soup bowl; a long, grey ringlet dangled over her face; when she had finished the soup she sat back and fled into one of her trances, a picture of gaunt unhappiness. “He’s just a high-strung boy,” the old man was explaining to the secretary; “nothing wrong with him; he’s well built, sound constitution; just pawky; jumpy, edgy, the way we all were at his age. I tell my daughter not to fuss so much with him; he’ll grow out: I’ve no doubt he’s just an artistic disposition: when they’re built that way it’s best to leave them alone and quit worrying; means they’re thinking, just finding inspiration, mostly; no cause for worry in that; a positive good, when they do something with it; as he will, no doubt, I have no fear.”

The maid put her face in at the door and smiled warmly at Mrs. Morgan. “He’s coming, ma’am,” she said.

Morgan came in, his hair untidy, his hands approximately washed. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, and began to eat his soup. His mother started to say something, changed her mind, changed it again, began a sentence, stopped. The maid brought in a large fish.

“Have a good walk, boy?” said the old man.

“Yes, thank you, Granf,” he replied, bowing politely.

“Fish, Jimmy?” said his mother, raising the fish-slice with an uneasy smile.

“Thank you, no; no fish,” he answered, looking out of the window.

“Are you not going to have any lunch?”

“I don’t happen to feel especially hungry, thank you.”

His mother brought down the slicer with a clang. Everybody jumped. “Jimmy! Will you kindly look at me one minute?”

He turned towards her a face in which, in a flash, the artificial coldness had been replaced by his more usual, sullen,
semi-drugged expression, underlip pouting resentfully, eyes half-closed and suspicious. “What’s wrong now?” he asked.

“You know very well what I’m talking about,” snapped his mother.

“How can I know when you haven’t even said anything?”

“What do you expect me to say?”

“Why should I expect you to say anything? Do I have to eat fish too, whether I want to or not?”

“You know very well that fish isn’t what I mean.”

“Why do I know?”

“Do you know or don’t you know, Jimmy; answer me, please, and kindly don’t stare the other way.”

“I know you’re mad over something.”

“And I hope you also know that if you hope to get your way like this you’re making a big mistake, a very big mistake.”

He gave a bored sigh. “I just don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Just so long as you bear it in mind, I don’t care a pin whether you know it or not.”