Frenzied Fiction: Ch. 5 - The Sorrows of A Summer Guest

Ch. 5 - The Sorrows of A Summer Guest

Let me admit, as I start to write, that the whole thing
is my own fault. I should never have come. I knew better.
I have known better for years. I have known that it is
sheer madness to go and pay visits in other people's
houses.

Yet in a moment of insanity I have let myself in for it
and here I am. There is no hope, no outlet now till the
first of September when my visit is to terminate. Either
that or death. I do not greatly care which.

I write this, where no human eye can see me, down by the
pond--they call it the lake--at the foot of Beverly-Jones's
estate. It is six o'clock in the morning. No one is up.
For a brief hour or so there is peace. But presently Miss
Larkspur--the jolly English girl who arrived last week
--will throw open her casement window and call across
the lawn, "Hullo everybody! What a ripping morning!" And
young Poppleson will call back in a Swiss yodel from
somewhere in the shrubbery, and Beverly-Jones will appear
on the piazza with big towels round his neck and shout,
"Who's coming for an early dip?" And so the day's fun
and jollity--heaven help me--will begin again.

Presently they will all come trooping in to breakfast,
in coloured blazers and fancy blouses, laughing and
grabbing at the food with mimic rudeness and bursts of
hilarity. And to think that I might have been breakfasting
at my club with the morning paper propped against the
coffee-pot, in a silent room in the quiet of the city.

I repeat that it is my own fault that I am here.

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!

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