The Spread Eagle and Other Stories Part 36

Because when we went in to dinner the guests, instead of being put to shame by the sight of the newspapers, actually sputtered with pleasure, and fell on them and unfolded them and opened them at the financial pages. And then the men began to shout, and argue, and perspire, and fling quotations about the table, and the women got very shrill, and said they didn't know what they would do if the wretched market kept up, or rather if it didn't keep up. And n.o.body admired the new furniture or the pictures, or the old Fiffield plate, or Sally's gown, or said anything pleasant and agreeable.

"Sam," said Tony Marshall to me, "I'm glad that you can empty your new swimming-pool in three-quarters of an hour, but if you don't watch out you may be so poor before the winter's over that you won't be able to buy water enough to fill it."

"If you're not careful," I said, "I'll fill it with champagne and make you people swim in it till you're more sprightly and agreeable. I never saw such a lot of oafs. I--"

"I tell you, Sam," bellowed Billoo, "that the financial status of this country, owing to that infernal lunatic in the White House--"

"If you must tell me again--" I began.

"Oh," he said disgustedly, "_you_ can't be serious about anything.

You're so da--a--ah--urn--rich that you never give a thought to the suffering of the consumer."

"Don't I?" said I. "Did you happen to see me the morning after the Clarion's ball last winter?--I thought about the consumer then, I can tell you."

Billoo turned his back on me very rudely. I looked across the table to Sally. She smiled feebly. She had drawn back her chair so that Tombs and Randall could fight it out across her plate without hitting her in the nose. They were frantically shaking their fists at each other, and they kept saying very loud, and both at once:

"I tell _you!_" and they made that beginning over and over, and never got any further.

At two o'clock the next morning Mrs. Giddings turned to Sally and said:

"And now, my dear, I can't wait another moment. You must show me all over your lovely new house. I can think of nothing else."

"Can't you?" said Sally. "I can. It's two o'clock. But I'll show you to your own lovely room, if you like."

In the morning I sent for Blenheim, and told him to take all the Sunday papers as soon as they arrived and throw them overboard. All I meant to be was tactful. But it wouldn't do. The first thing the men asked for was the papers; and the second thing. And finally they made such a fuss and threw out so many hints that I had to send the motor-boat over to the main-land. This made me rather sore at the moment, and I wished that the motor-boat was at the bottom of the Sound; but it wasn't, and had to be sent.

Later in the day I was struck with an idea. It was one of the few that ever struck me without outside help, and I will keep it dark for the present. But when I got Sally alone I said to her:

"Now, Sally, answer prettily: do you or do you not know what plausible weather is?"

"I do not," she said promptly.

"Of course, you do not," I said, "you miserable little ignoramus. It has to do with an idea."

"No, Sam!" cried Sally.

"One of mine," I said.

"Oh, Sam!" she said. "Can I help?"

"You can."

"How?"

"You can pray for it."

"For the idea?" she asked.

"No, you silly little goat," I said. "For the plausible weather."

"Must I?" she asked.

"You must," I said. "If you have marrow-bones, prepare to use them now."

Sally looked really shocked.

"Knees," I explained. "They're the same thing. But now that I think of it, you needn't use yours. If anybody were looking, it would be different, of course. But n.o.body is, and you may use mine."

So Sally used my knees for the moment, and I explained the idea to her briefly, and some other things at greater length; and then we both laughed and prayed aloud for plausible weather.

But it was months coming.

II

Think, if you can, of a whole winter pa.s.sing in Westchester County without its storming one or more times on any single solitary Sat.u.r.day or Sunday or holiday! Christmas Day, even, some of the men played tennis out-of-doors. The b.a.l.l.s were cold and didn't bounce very high, and all the men who played wanted to sit in the bar and talk stocks, but otherwise it made a pretty good game. Often, because our guests were so disagreeable about the money they had lost or were losing, we decided not to give any more parties, but when we thought that fresh air was good for our friends, whether they liked it or not, of course we had to keep on asking them. And, besides, we were very much set on the idea that I have referred to, and there was always a chance of plausible weather.

It did not come till May. But then it "came good," as Sally said. It "came good" and it came opportunely. Everything was right. We had the right guests; we had the right situation in Wall Street, and the weather was right. It came out of the north-east, darkly blowing (this was Sat.u.r.day, just after the usual motor-boat load and their afternoon editions had been landed), and at first it made the Sound, and even the sheltered narrows between the island and the main-land, look pancake-flat and oily. Then it turned the Sound into a kind of incoming gray, striped with white; and then into clean white, wonderfully bright and staring under the dark clouds. I never saw a finer storm come up finer. But n.o.body would go out to the point to see it come. The Stock Exchange had closed on the verge of panic (that was its chronic Sat.u.r.day closing last winter) and you couldn't get the men or women away from the thought of what _might_ happen Monday. "Good heavens," said Billoo, "think of poor Sharply on his way home from Europe! Can't get to Wall Street before Wednesday, and G.o.d knows what he'll find when he gets there."

"What good would it do him to get there before?" I asked. "Wouldn't he sail right in and do the wrong thing, just as everybody has done all winter?"

"You don't understand, Sam," said Billoo, very lugubriously; and then he annihilated me by banging his fist on a table and saying, "_At least he'd be on the spot, wouldn't he_?"

"Oh," I said, "if you put it that way, I admit that that's just where he would be. Will anybody come and have a look at the fine young storm that I'm having served?"

"Not now, Sam--not now," said Billoo, as if the storm would always stay just where, and as, it was; and n.o.body else said anything. The men wanted to shout and get angry and make dismal prophecies, and the women wanted to stay and hear them, and egg them on, and decide what they would buy or sell on Monday.

"All right, Billoo-on-the-spot," I said. "Sally--?"

Sally was glad to come. And first we went out on the point and had a good look at the storm. The waves at our feet were breaking big and wild, the wind was groaning and howling as if it had a mortal stomach-ache, and about a mile out was a kind of thick curtain of perpendicular lines, with dark, squally shadows at its base.

"Sam!" cried Sally, "it's snow--snow," and she began to jump up and down.

In a minute or two flakes began to hit us wet slaps in the face, and we took hands and danced, and then ran (there must have been something intoxicating about that storm) all the way to the pier. And there was the captain of the motor-boat just stepping ash.o.r.e.

"The man himself," said Sally.

"Captain," said I, "how are we off for boats?"

By good-luck there were in commission only the motor-boat, and the row-boat that she towed behind, and a canoe in the loft of the boat-house.

"Captain," I said, "take the _Hobo_ (that was the name of the motor-boat) and her tender to City Island, and don't come back till Wednesday morning, in time for the Wall Street special."

"When you get to City Island," said Sally, "try to look crippled."

"Not you," I said, "but the _Hobo_."