The Collected Stories of William Humphrey

by William Humphrey

  “What is it you need now?” Paul was asking. He too liked to make himself out a victim of Edmond’s selfishness.

  Looking from one to the other, Edmond could see that each would like to be the one to get a new tire for his bicycle. It was a good time to ask for a speedometer, too. He chose Uncle Paul, sure that Father would then buy both.

  Paul looked at Walter to be sure he did not resent his intrusion. Walter smiled tolerantly. It warmed him to be able to let Paul sometimes feel himself the father of a son. Feeling warm, Walter shook his head in admonition, saying, “I don’t know, Paul. I don’t know. Keep this up and you will ruin him.” Paul glowed. How he enjoyed being told he was making a fool of himself over that boy.

  Walter had long ago imagined a scene that was bound to occur one day. Sooner or later Nancy, Paul’s wife, was going to burst out with all her resentment and say, “If that boy were mine—!”

  And that was as far as she would get.

  “My dear Nancy, that is just the point. He is not yours.”

  And with those words, Walter felt sure, he would be saying what Paul had wanted to say all these years.

  Sister ducked her head and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Father had got off. She had made Edmond’s breakfast. The dishes were washed and replaced and the laundry ready for Mrs. Hansen. What was it she had not done? She had made her morning inspection of the garden and with great care reset two iris bulbs which the cats had dug up. Had there been something she was supposed to remind Father of?

  It was in the morning when the house was still, and at night just before bed that this feeling came over her. She would think and think and not recall what it was, but grow more certain by the minute that it was something important she had forgotten to do, or something urgent that someone had said to be sure to remind him of.

  She had no more time to worry over it. At eight o’clock she must begin cleaning up after the cats.

  Her routine was to start in the dining room, just outside the right-hand kitchen door. There, under the table upon which the wines were ranged, was sure to be a mess. It was one of their favorite spots.

  Certainly it was contrary of the cats not to use the sandbox. In four rooms newspapers had to be spread in every corner and collected once, often twice a day. Yet Sister could not think of punishing them. The training was so cruel. Poor things, they could not help themselves, and she had grown accustomed to it.

  To get under the Swedish fireplace was a job, and that was where Huckleberry always went. No place suited Zee-Zee but under the teakwood table upon which the samovar sat. Pinky favored a spot behind the cabinet of blown glass, while Dots, his sister, had a place behind the pottery cabinet.

  No one could tell Sister that all cats were alike!

  “Naughty Bo-Bo,” she said each day as she went to clean behind a certain copper urn, and, “Dreadful Yvonne,” she murmured, crawling under the dining table.

  And Clarabelle, Helen, Walter, Little Nell, Hildegarde and all the rest, as she went behind the scented geranium, the lacquered screen, the Franklin stove, the table with the Swedish bowl, her voice growing softer and her smile broader as she went.

  “Oh, naughty Leopold, naughty, naughty Harriet,” she said. “And Mr. Micawber!” she cried on seeing that a leg of the breakfast-room table was being used again to sharpen claws.

  The cabinets filled high with glass and china and the rows of copper vessels glowed in the darkened room. Sister crawled across the patch of sunlight spreading through the French doors.

  She finished, straightened herself, and took a slow, thoughtful sniff. She believed it was all right. She walked through the dining room, pausing at the likely spots to test the air, warning herself that she must be critical. Being so accustomed to the smell, she could not trust herself to judge for other people’s noses.

  Poised on the doorsill, before she would step in, Mrs. Hansen, the cook, stood sniffing.

  Only once had Mrs. Hansen arrived before Sister finished cleaning up after the cats. It was a revelation to her; she was scandalized. She still grumbled about people with so much money, a child so spoiled that she had not one, but umpteen cats to mess wherever the urge took them all over a house costing more than her dead husband, sweating day after day on a railroad line, ever made in his life, plus the little she had earned since he passed away, and often she would throw in all that her three children were ever likely to make, for good measure.

  One would think it was Mrs. Hansen who had to clean up after the cats. Indeed, she believed that she did, and told her children so, describing the task in revolting detail, to reproach them still further for their everlasting ingratitude.

  Always late, Mrs. Hansen, instead of apologizing, gave Sister to feel she ought to be ashamed, making a poor widow woman with three children of her own to get breakfast for, come then to attend her family.

  All forms of quiet aggravated Mrs. Hansen. It gave her the creeps, she complained. She jumped and gasped each time she turned to find Sister standing near. When Mrs. Hansen had no one to talk to at the top of her voice, she hummed as loud as she could.

  Mrs. Hansen began her day with a good loud complaint. She could settle down to work only when she knew that her grievances were in ahead of everyone else’s. “Well, here I am,” she declared.

  Outside, cats bounded up in alarm and slunk off out of range of Mrs. Hansen’s voice.

  How was she to break the news of Queenie’s litter, Sister wondered. She did not feel apologetic about the new kittens; but if she seemed to be, perhaps Mrs. Hansen would give in with a smile and a shake of the head. She had seen people pass off their whims and weaknesses in a way that made others humor them.

  “Oh, dear,” she sighed. “Queenie had a new litter this morning.”

  “Well, if it’s got you worried,” said Mrs. Hansen, “I can tell you just what to do. Now, we have cats at our house. But,” she said, “there’s cats—and then, there’s cats.” The water for her tea was boiling. She turned to set it off the light. “I’m glad to see you’ve realized that it was getting out of hand. Now, if you’d like, I’ll just put them in a sack and on my way home as I’m driving over the bridge—”

  Mrs. Hansen drew herself up, listening suspiciously. She had the feeling that she was talking with no one to hear her. She turned. The child was gone! What a creepy feeling that gave her.

  Sister was dusting in the library. Out in the garden Leonard knelt, patiently untwining the runners of the strawberry plants. The old Negro’s face gleamed in the sun; it was the color of eggplant. Sister watched him rise and greet her mother when she came upon him from around the hedge, the special smile she had for him already on her lips. Leonard’s ways gave Martha Taylor much amusement; she imagined he disapproved of most everything she did; she walked in the garden in pajamas.

  Leonard’s quaint uprightness made him a character. Guests were charmed by Martha’s anecdotes in which she did something frivolous, and Leonard extinguished her with his solemn scorn.

  She suggested work for him, sure that once she was gone he would fall back to snipping runners from the strawberries, declaring to himself that he knew what needed doing.

  Martha took a turn among the flower beds, kneeling here and there to pluck a weed. At the herb beds she lingered to enjoy the sunshine and the fresh air and the smell of sweet basil and tarragon. She glided over the cobblestones of the court, ran her fingers through the Dutchman’s-pipe that hung over the dining-room door, and went in.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Hansen,” she said. “Ah, there’s my boy.”

  Edmond came forward for his hug. He was beginning to wish to have it some place other than in front of Mrs. Hansen.

  “Tell Mother what you’ve been doing, Sweet.”

  “Nothing,” he said, meaning, nothing wrong.

  “Did you have your breakfast? Was it good?”

  “It was all right. Well, I have to go now. I’m going down to Billy Morgan’s.”

  “Did you finish that
birdhouse you were building?”

  “Long ago. It wasn’t so good. I threw it away.”

  “Oh—too bad. But then why not build another?”

  “I have to go down to Billy’s. He’s got a pair of guinea pigs.”

  “You have had guinea pigs. You were never interested in your own. Wouldn’t you like to stay and help me in the garden?”

  “I’d rather go down to Morgan’s.”

  “Aunt Nancy is coming this afternoon. Perhaps she will bring something for you.”

  Edmond shrugged. He knew the sort of things Aunt Nancy brought.

  “Well,” said Martha, “I know a little boy with a birthday coming up soon.”

  His birthday was twenty-four days away. Already she had begun teasing him. She enjoyed making him guess what he was getting and where it was hidden. As the time neared she worked him into a frenzy of impatience. Then, as on the day before Christmas, at the last minute she would tell.

  “Oh, well,” he said, “I’m not expecting much this year. Besides, it’s not the gift that counts.”

  She could interest him in nothing. He was determined to go. Martha yawned and rose.

  “Where is Sister?” she asked.

  “Here.”

  “Good heavens, child!” Martha cried.

  Sister stared. What had she done now?

  “The way you slink up on people! Just look what you’ve done to poor Mrs. Hansen!”

  Sister began accounting for herself since getting up.

  “I watered the plants,” she said, “and dusted the library. I took out the trash and burned it and put some rugs out to sun.”

  “Did your father leave any message for me?” asked Martha.

  Sister thought for a moment. “No.” She hurried to tell the other things she had done this morning. “I scrubbed the bathtub.”

  “Are you sure?” Martha asked.

  “Yes. Edmond left a ring.”

  “Who, me?”

  “No, no, no,” said Martha. “I mean, sure that Father left no message.”

  She had been sure; now she hesitated.

  Martha sighed wearily. “Well, I just hope it was nothing important.”

  “I swept the back steps,” said Sister hopefully.

  Martha said that that was thoughtful of her.

  Sister smiled her bashful smile. She blushed. She felt encouraged to tell that Queenie had had her kittens.

  “How nice,” Martha said.

  Sister watched her closely. “Would you like to see them?”

  “All right.”

  “They’re in the sunroom,” Sister said. “I put them in a box. They’re behind a plant. There are three of them. One has a ring around its left eye, just like Queenie. I’ve already named them. But if you can think of better names …” Her words trailed off as she realized that Martha might be annoyed with so much chatter.

  The kittens were asleep. Sister stroked Queenie. She was proud of her. Martha knelt and cautiously put out her hand. Queenie growled.

  “Queenie!” Sister cried.

  When the tips of Martha’s fingers touched her head, Queenie snarled. Sister gave her a hard slap. Growling softly, Queenie drew back in bewilderment. Sister, too, was astonished at what she had done.

  “Come back, Mother,” she cried. “She won’t do it again, I promise.” But Martha was gone. “Oh, Queenie,” Sister moaned. “Why did you have to do that—just when things were going well.”

  Queenie sulked; she refused to make up, and it seemed to Sister that she looked misunderstood. She considered Queenie’s side of the affair. A cat, she reminded herself, can tell when a person is only pretending to like it.

  “Hot, isn’t it?”

  “It is, miss,” said Leonard, barely looking up. The thin gray fuzz on his head was like pocket lint.

  “It’s the humidity,” Sister suggested.

  “That’s what they say.”

  Sister wished she could find something to say that others were not always saying. Leonard was known not to like to waste words on the same old things.

  “Now, missy, if you’ll just stand out of my light I can tell which is the weeds and which is the vegetables.”

  She started. She was dreadfully embarrassed.

  After a short wait, Sister softly cleared her throat. Leonard went on carefully teasing out a clump of crab grass.

  “My,” she said, “there are a lot of them, aren’t there—weeds, I mean.” She meant to sympathize with him.

  But he thought she was saying that he had neglected his job. “Where they’s dirt,” he said, “they is bound to be weeds.”

  “Do you have a very big garden of your own?”

  Seeing that he must talk, Leonard drew off his gloves and brought his pipe out of his jumper pocket and fitted it in the one place where he had teeth strong enough to support it.

  “My old woman raises us a few things,” he said. He looked puzzled as to how that could interest anyone.

  He made his living raising other people’s gardens, yet his wife raised theirs. Sister was tickled. Leonard smiled, too. Then he straightened his smile, as though he had caught his lips doing something without his permission.

  All the same, Sister believed he was in a good humor.

  “Do you have chickens?” she asked.

  They did, and ducks and one old gander.

  “And a cow?”

  She could not quite catch whether or not they had a cow.

  But dogs they had. Three. And they had cats, she supposed? No? No, the last cat they had had got run over on the highway, it must be—oh, six, seven years ago.

  Its name was Citronella. Or maybe he had that one confused with another that was a little bit lighter in shade.

  And had they never had another since?

  Never another. No’m.

  Sister said she hoped that was not because they had lost their liking for cats.

  Leonard stopped sucking on his pipe and looked at her out of the corner of one eye. Was she working her way around to trying to give him one of them measly kittens?

  “Well, to tell you the truth,” he said, “we ain’t much on cats. Dogs, now …”

  Sister assured him that she was fond of dogs, too. Many people who loved cats were not, but she was.

  “Now if it was puppies you was trying to get shut of, why, that’d be something else again,” said Leonard.

  For a moment Sister did not understand. Then, “Oh, dear,” she cried. “You thought I wanted to—” She could hardly think of it. “Why, I’d never give one of them away. Not for anything.” And certainly not, she thought, to a man who had just said he did not like cats.

  Leonard chuckled. “Well, miss, now I knew that was just what you’d say. I was just testing you. I knew you wouldn’t part with one of your kittens. And to tell you the honest truth, I do like cats. Like ’em fine. Yes, indeed—cats.”

  Sister smiled faintly.

  Leonard knocked out his pipe. When he turned from picking up his gloves he found her gone.

  “I’m sure it’s very good of you to say so, Nancy—but it’s perfectly inedible. And soufflé, you know, is a dish that Mrs. Hansen is so good at ordinarily.”

  “No, no, Martha,” Nancy Taylor said. “It’s fine.” And Enid and Evaline spoke up, “Yes, yes. It’s fine. Really.”

  Their table was in the grape arbor. Shashlik was slowly doing to a turn over a charcoal brazier within Martha’s reach. The juices simmered from the meat and fell on the coals with a sizzle and a puff of smoke. The smell of sweet basil and fresh earth drifted in from the garden. The day was warm and still. Cats slumbered on the rocks.

  “You are kind, all of you,” said Martha gratefully. “Poor Mrs. Hansen. She worked so hard on her soufflé, too—knowing you were coming. You can imagine how badly she felt. After what happened, she wanted to make another one, you know, though the poor woman could hardly get a grip on her nerves.”

  “After what happened?” said Evaline.

  “She saw a
dead mouse,” said Edmond.

  “Edmond. Dear. Not at the table,” said Martha.

  “She always spoils the dinner when she sees a dead mouse,” said Edmond.

  “Or a live one,” said Martha. “Which is considerably more often.”

  It was true that Sister’s cats were rather slack at mousing. She fed them too much, Martha said. Loving cats had not made Sister hate mice. She loved her cats all the more because they did not molest them.

  Martha gave a toss of her head. “Madness!” she cried gaily. “Plumbing that never works, a horse no one can ride, a gardener who won’t let you near your own garden—and a houseful of cats that won’t catch mice. Where else but at the Walter Taylors’?”

  “But really, Martha,” said Nancy, “I find the soufflé …”

  “What that poor woman must think about this fantastic household!” cried Martha. “The stories she must tell in the village about the Taylors!—us Taylors, I mean,” she added with a smile.

  “Oh, Lord!” cried Nancy. “And our Mrs. Porter about us Taylors!”

  Martha smiled down the table upon her sister-in-law. And that smile dealt with all attempts to match her singularity.

  Being poached upon by nineteen cats who caught a mouse a year was one of the most delightful of the Taylors’ whimsicalities.

  “Nineteen!” visitors exclaimed. They were answered by Martha’s smile, bashful and guilty, a smile that said: I know it’s a weakness in me, but isn’t it an adorable weakness.

  “Well, I’m afraid we shall simply have to call the soufflé a bad job,” said Martha, and pushed hers away. So did the others, their appetites for it fairly gone by now.

  “May I have some more, please?”

  This came from the end of the table.

  Everyone turned and found it was Sister. A queer child.

  Martha took the skewer of meat from the brazier. Cats stirred, yawning and stretching, sniffing the air.

  Serving the plates, Martha said, “I suppose Sister has told you that three more were born this morning.”

  “Why, no,” exclaimed Nancy Taylor, turning to smile at Sister kindly.

  Perhaps she might have asked to see them, had not Huckleberry’s paws appeared just then over the edge of the table. He jumped and landed near Evaline. Sister leaped from her chair. But Martha was already lifting him by the scruff and putting him on the ground.