“I loved the place,” said Sam to Branders, one of the artists of the Expedition, “but never again. She is the Queen of Sheba, but she is too much for me.”
“Here we are between the Gulf of Siam and the Bay of Bengal, with everything to see, and we have to go back to the Potomac: it’s pretty flat, isn’t it? Well, life’s long. We’ll all come back perhaps. How about a shandy?”
“I’ll take a lemonade,” said Sam.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1 Family corroboree.
JO GOT TO TOHOGA PLACE late. The Pollits were scattered all over the house and grounds. For five minutes the sunroom was the scene of straw-colored fireworks. Jo threw down her flowers, chocolates, her, hat, while the others started to pour in around her, through doors and long, open French windows, and exclaimed, “Where’s Sam? I want to give him a big hug! Where’s my baby brother? Where is he, where is he, where is he? Tell him I’m here! Tell him Jo is here! Tell him Jo the Jolly Sailor has brought him his chocs! Where is he?”
With a rhinoceros bound, she burst out of the circle, looking for Sam, shouting for Sam. She bounded all over the place. She was a Golden Horde by herself. When she found Sam beside the snakes’ cage, she fell on his neck,
“Old boy! Samivel! It’s himself! If I could have got to the train I would have, Sam! What have you been doing to yourself? You lost weight! I cut out your picture in the paper and put it up in the kindergarten! You should have seen their little faces when I told them it was my brother! I’m proud of you, I say it who shouldn’t. Father, tell that boy to stop it! Stop it, Sam, stop it! You’re putting us all in the shade! Hooray, hooray: he’s famous. He’s a great man. How are you, Samivel?”
“Easy, easy, old girl!” said Sam, weeping a little, “don’t be a fool, Jo! Easy, old girl! Dry those tears. There were others there besides myself, strange as that may seem to a big sister! I ain’t the only white-haired boy in the days of the sun! Hooray yourself! Hooray for Jo!”
“You lummocks, you dumbbell,” said Jo, wiping her eyes.
“Nary a lummocks,” said Sam, “nary a lummocks! Where is the rest of the reception committee? How many more is a-goin’ to fall weepin bitterly on my neck! Oh, these are too much! This is some doin’s! Femaile, sez I, go home to your wife and chilluns, ef you hev sich! Weep not, fair made, it is but a slight contree-temps!”
“Fool!” cried Jo sniffing.
“So you went and missed me?” inquired Sam.
“Why not?” demanded Jo.
“There’s a law saying no big yaller-haired cornstalks kin miss their little brothers,” said Sam.
“You know Brownell’s brother is Inspector now?” cried Jo. “That man you detest in the Department? He’s forged ahead. He’s a nice man. He came round last week and that Gray woman made up to him shamefully, to try and get that position. She sat up all night making a picture of Rumpelstiltskin and she signed it! ‘Rembrandt’! She signs her charts too! A Leonardo in the kindergarten. Myrtle Gray! Hff! The Catholics help each other; it’s a state within the state. It’s a disgrace. Everyone is furious. A teacher wrote God with a small g, and she reported her! Not that I’m for atheists, but we don’t want any Rome-controlled delators! Spying and snooping, with the priests behind her back. He complimented me and said, ‘I enjoyed the lesson very much, Miss Pollit.’ I could see he was favorably impressed. In the playground he came up to me and started making vague remarks—I could see he was hinting. So I up and told him what I thought about the Gray woman. Someone has to speak out! I said to him bluntly, ‘I don’t like sectarianism in the schools. I never did, I never shall. It’s against my principles and it’s against the Constitution. It’s against the law. But there are some’ (I said) ‘that have a law higher than the law. Anyone whose political or religious capital is outside the U.S.A.’ ”
Sam had meantime sat down on the grass bank and was laughing languidly and pulling away at the rank weeds, “All right, Jo, all right: O.K., old girl, cool off!”
“Cool off,” cried Jo, tossing her head. “What for?”
“Dear old Jo, on the same old warpath,” said Sam.
“I prefer a hot head to cold feet,” said Jo. She went on with her story. In the meantime, sounds of cheer came from the house where everyone was helping Jinny, Sam’s sister-in-law, and Louie and Hazel decorate the place and get ready for the banquet to which they would sit down at six o’clock. Bonnie was there, not herself, a little sad and quiet, with a thin face. She was staying with Jinny in Baltimore and helping in the house. But Bonnie, after quietly embracing and weeping over Sam, had gone back to work for his party, just the same, and she was at present tasting her Badminton Cup, her own secret specialty, for which dear Lennie, her brother, had brought three bottles of claret and one of curaçao. As all Sam’s parties hitherto had been nonalcoholic, this was to be the great surprise of the day; for certainly, everyone argued, since Sam went abroad, he had learned to be more a man of the world, and he, at least, would never object.
Everyone noticed that Sam had changed greatly. He was more restrained: he did not complain and patted his children on the head with a wise, sad smile, more like an ordinary father than the eccentric he had been. He had been eight months amongst people of his own age and had conversed only with them, although he had made a few casual friends of eight to twelve, Chinese and Malays, schoolboys, sons of his Teochiew friend, the naturalist and of the curio dealer and all the boys of the villages. But his relation to these, since he did not speak to them freely, was that of a tribal uncle, something of the older generation.
The children were gamboling all around their father, and as Jo’s story went on, rising and falling with the urgencies of the storm, he beckoned his Ernest (who had grown more thoughtful and distant and had fewer smiles than Ali Mahmoud, Sam’s friend in City Road, Singapore) and his twins, melancholy Little-Sam and thoughtful Saul, towards him. It had been a great day, this day of welcome, and they were glad to sink on the grassy bank and swell his humming,
And thar we see a swampin gun
Large as a log of maple
Upon a dandy little cart
A load for feyther’s caytle …
Jo waited till they paused and sniffed good-humoredly, “Well, you’re too glad to see your Daddy back to think of me: it’s Father’s Day.”
She left them there, a handsome buttercup garland sprawled along the lawn. After a short silence, Sam raised his eyes from the depths of the orchard, where he had plunged them, drinking in through them the green and the blue, and he said wearily,
“You kids didn’t lose any dorsal vertebrae weeding the gardens while Dad-the-Bold was in furrin parts, did you?” Ernie defended himself, “The varmints wouldn’t work.” They defended themselves, “He never told us to.” Their father said miserably, as if to himself, “And the boiler wasn’t fixed up; and there’s no new boiler; and the possum died and a snake died. Nobuddy did nuffin. When Sam went away everybody just plain forgot him. ‘Near can I forgit the surblime speckticul which met my gase as I alited from the Staige with my umbreller and verlise.’ [Artemus Ward: The Atlantic Cable.] Weeds, springing up everywhere, the paths cracked and our hanni-miles dead.” He did not even laugh; just went on sadly recounting to himself the default. The boys sat round with him, as miserable as himself. In all the wild, vacant months that had passed, like a stupid, shouting, windy holiday, they had never given one thought to their father’s schemes and ideas. It had been nothing but Little-Sam’s and Saul’s and Ernie’s ideas, a great savanna of opportunity in which they stumbled, ranged, hallooed, occasionally catching sight of each other, at intervals dreaming about a personage, genie of the swamp, who called himself Sam-the-Bold, their father, and was away, his wand broken.
All the joyful Pollits were still running up- and downstairs, and the clink of plates, silver, and glasses could be heard, as well as Bonnie’s gay call, “Nearly ready, folks, nearly ready: get ready! Who’s going to strike up?” and Lennie’s wild bagpipes (made by vibrating h
is long lean cheek), The Campbells Are Coming, Hooray, Hooray! Then the strains of the wedding march started up under Jo’s tough fingers as Leslie Benbow, née Pollit, new-married, arrived with her short, half-bald husband, rather more flustered than is common in a twenty-six-year-old bride and plump in the waist. Leslie had not stayed her marriage for Sam. Many things had gone on without him.
But they all stayed in the house or on the porch, leaving Sam to his children at the top of the orchard, and to his thoughts which, it was evident, were not of the sweetest, not the sort a man might be expected to have on returning to the bosom of his family from a glorious trip to the Far East. Sam felt it keenly that Leslie, his favorite niece, did not come to see him, and that no one seemed to bother about him. He went on talking tiredly to the boys, with a joke from time to time, trying to regain his old style: “ ‘The people gave me a cordyal recepshun. The press was loud in her prazes,’ ” but Artemus Ward fell off his tongue without a rebound.
Now the noises had quietened a little and the Pollits seemed to be conferring” about something. In another minute, Bonnie sang out, “Come on, now, Samuel: we want you in the sun-room!”
Sam got up holding out his long fingers to his boys, and trailed them with him to the house. He stopped a minute, without thinking, before the back porch, staring at it, and then said mildly, “Needs a couple of coats!”
Inside they were avid for him, waiting to pounce on him.
“Here’s our Sam! Samuel! Sammy, my boy! Sam!” Bonnie rushed forward and pecked him on the cheek. Her skin had yellowed through the winter; she was overrouged, and her beautiful hair new washed, full of blue lights, made her look sicklier.
“You’re not the only one in the paper,” cried Jinny affectionately, buxom and pretty in a blue dress, her red hair in more of a fuss than ever. “Jo was in the papers. Jo sent one of her poems to the Sun and they published it.”
“Did you see our poetess?” asked Bonnie. “Jo’s poems? Did you send it to him, Jo?”
“It’s pretty,” said Leslie, in a retiring way.
“You’re flattering me,” said Jo, “it’s not so wonderful as you make out.”
“It’s very good, Jo,” Bonnie declared reproachfully.
“Did you write a poem, Jo?” Sam asked with interest.
“In the Baltimore Sun,” said Ernie breathlessly; “she got paid for it.”
“Josephine M. Pollit!” affirmed Jinny Pollit good-naturedly. Because it was Sam’s welcome-home, she tried to cover up the quarrel between herself and Jo; but Jo did no such thing. She turned her back on Jinny in a grand manner.
“Have you got it, Jo?” Sam asked.
“I have it,” said Bonnie, rushing to the settee and rummaging in her purse. She at length produced a dirty, browned scrap of paper which she unfolded and handed with pride to Sam. Jo said with bonhomie, “I just thought I’d send it in; and they accepted it at once.”
“You could make money that way,” said Lennie to Jo.
“Isn’t it wonderful, Sam, a poetess in the family?” demanded Bonnie. “Being published? You ought to publish some of your letters, Sam. They went all round the family; we could never get enough of them. We read them aloud. Henny sent us all your letters. Henny was such a dear and so good to the little ones: but then she is a wonderful mother to the little ones, she really is.”
During Bonnie’s enthusiastic rattle, an uneasy silence had begun to gather over assembled Pollitry, but it was not till it was well advanced that Bonnie saw it and stopped. Henny was not present. Faintly Bonnie repeated, “Read it, Sam; it’s wonderful.”
“Don’t be absurd,” commanded Jo, frowning, “such a silly fuss!”
The children clustered round Sam, looking at Jo, this combination of Minerva and Juno.
“Read it, Deddy,” said Tommy in his pretty, chipping accent.
Sam laughed ruefully, “Don’t call me Deddy. And my Sedgewing who wrote to me, ‘Dead Dad.’ ”
They all shrieked with laughter. Evie looked greatly mortified. Sam continued tenderly, “And who asked me if I could shot a tiger?”
There was wild hilarity, kind Bonnie and Jinny stuffing their hands into their mouths, kind Lennie and Peter Pollit, uncles, turning side on, because anyone could see that Evie was nearly in tears. Sam’s old father, seventy-year-old Charles, sitting behind the throng on the settee, laughed consumedly, laughing at them all, delighted to have them together for once. He no more noticed little Evie than some puppy hiding in a corner. Sam held up his hand for the merriment to cease, saying,
“Listen, kids and kinfolk, Josie wrote this and it’s very beautiful.”
(“Listen, listen,” whispered the relatives on all sides. Old Charles Pollit leaned forward, laughing still. He could write poetry better than the lot of them.)
Sam read,
In Peggy’s eyes
Is the blue of the skies
And innocent looks
That are more than wise.
In a garden plot
Of forgetmenot,
And water brooks
Beneath blue skies
A duplicate lies
Of Peggy’s eyes.
Evie stared at her Aunt Jo in the delicious, timid, vacant admiration of the inept. Ernie slewed a look at Louie, standing behind two visitors, and saw her flash a look of contempt at Sam and Jo too. Sam raised his head and saw her too. He said pleasantly, “Isn’t that pretty, Looloo?”
“It’s nice.”
Sam was pleased, “It’s very nice, Looloo. Why don’t you try to write something like that too, Looloo? All of us Pollits are a good hand at jingle: we can all turn out a rhyme. I think you could, and they might publish it too.”
Louie became speechless with resentment, but none saw this but the watchful Ernie. Jo bounced and cried, “Oh, she’s very like me: I know she’s got a talent: Louie’s all right. I bet she could do one nearly as good as that right now.”
In a choking voice, Louie said quickly, “Oh, I don’t think I would write one like that.”
“Well, perhaps not right now: but soon, some day! And now, Father, Father! Come on and do your stunt!”
They began to clear back, leaving a wide circle into which old Charlie advanced with accomplished hesitations, pretending to be broken down with age and rheumatism. They began to clap and back farther away to leave him room for his dance. Louie, choking with rage, slipped out of the door without being noticed, and went into the quiet upstairs. Henny had retired for the day to the girls’ room. She was sitting in a big, easy chair looking very bitter and pale, with the brown, mottled skin of pregnancy’s end, her neck corrugated. Louie came slowly towards her,
“Everyone’s here now, Mother.”
Henny grunted, in contempt. “They were reading Auntie Jo’s poem in the Sun.”
Henny grunted.
“I think it’s rot,” pouted Louie.
“Oh, the Pollits are all so conceited,” Henny said impatiently, “that if they write two lines, everyone has to take three fits and a faint. Don’t you be like them, that’s all I ask.”
“Will I tidy the room?” asked Louie.
“No, leave me alone. No one’s coming up here; I gave orders about that. I wish to God I could take a taxi and get away from their idiot party and all that buzzing and jigging that they think’s so clever and funny.”
The grandfather’s cracked baritone chirped away to the audience below,
Slap, dash, slap, with a whitewash brush—
Talk about a county ball!
In and out the corners, round the Johnny Horners;
We were a gay old pair of gorners—
“Wouldn’t you go down for a little while, Mother?”
“No, I’d rather go to the big bonfire! I suppose now the word will go round that I am sabotaging. Oh, darn everything. Go on down and help. Don’t stand there fidgeting and staring at me.”
“Would you like some tea, Mother?”
“Oh, I suppose I’ve got to take
something. I’m so empty, I feel like a big barrel floating out to sea.”
Louie, delighted, ran downstairs. Whenever her irritations got too deep, she mooched in to see her mother. Here, she had learned, without knowing she had learned it, was a brackish well of hate to drink from, and a great passion of gall which could run deep and still, or send up waterspouts, that could fret and boil, or seem silky as young afternoon, something that put iron in her soul and made her strong to resist the depraved healthiness and idle jollity of the Pollit clan.
It was a strange affection. It could never express itself by embraces or kisses, nothing more than a rare, cool, dutiful kiss on the withering cheek of Henny. It came from their physical differences, because their paths could never meet, and from the natural outlawry of womankind. Downstairs came Louie, for the tea, cheerfully muttering,
Moonbeam, leave the shadowy vale,
To bathe this burning brow.
(Shelley: “To the Moonbeam”)
The indefatigable Jinny was stretching and puffing on the stepladder on the front porch, fixing a forgotten string of Chinese lanterns. In the dining room and the hall stood the wooden cases Sam had brought back from Malaya. None had been opened, though many a curious finger had poked them since early this afternoon. As soon as Sam knew that they were giving a surprise party, he had announced that, despite his fatigue, he would open them all and that everyone would see the Eastern treasures and carry off a present.
Grandfather Charlie, in high feather, spied Louie and called excitedly,
“The Old Gaffer’s going to give another show! Come on, Granddaughter! The Old One’s about to present ‘Mr. Wemmick and the Aged Parent.’ Come along, come along, roll up, roll up, come right in, the show’s just about to begin! All star performance: manager, Charles Pollit; business manager, Charlie Pollit; stage manager, Chas. Pollit, and barker, Old Charlie. Mr. Wemmick, played by Charles Pollit, and The Aged, played by Charles Pollit. You must excuse, not stare at, the redundancy of that beautiful name, Pollit, in the caste, ladies and gentlemen, if there be any of that name here, for it’s all in the family. And the play written by Charles—Dickens, the greatest Charlie!”
The Man Who Loved Children Page 31