Fancies and Goodnights - Collier John (читать книги онлайн бесплатно полностью без txt) 📗
Bates and Cartwright, both a little red about the gills, responded as stiffly, sitting tight, waiting for him to go first out of the train. The lantern-jawed man looked at him in obvious bewilderment. Henry looked away. He got off the train.
He drove home, still fuming. «Hello, darling!» said Edna.
«Hello, Daddy!» cried little Joyce, running toward him, all smiles and dimples, arms out, giving her curls a twitch — it really looked damned effective.
«Hello, daffodil!» said he, gathering her up. «Did you like California, honey? Would you like to go back there?»
«What's that?» said Edna.
«Never mind,» said he. «Look, it's seven already. That child should be in bed. She wants to keep that dancing quality.»
«Listen,» began Edna.
«I can't,» said he. «I've a letter to get off. I can just make it. Have dinner held up for once, there's an angel.»
He went to the writing desk in his bedroom, irritated into an overmastering urge to do something definite, final He needed to deliver just one kick that would shatter the world of Westchester and museums. «Petty, highbrow snobbery!» said he to himself as he took up his pen.
He wrote to his chief at the museum. The letter started as a formal resignation, with the request that some over-due leave might coincide with the normal period of notice, so that Henry need not appear at the office again.
Henry leaned back and surveyed these formal paragraphs, and found them rather negative. «It was not thus,» he thought, «that the yellow waistcoated should bid farewell to the grey minded.» Curling his lip, he added an urbane and scarifying word or two, such as would leave no doubt at all as to the sort of man they were dealing with.
He hurried downstairs. «Can dinner come on?» said Edna. «It will be spoiled.»
«Let us bring it in ourselves,» said he. «I want May to rush down to the village with this. She can just get the mail.»
Soon they were seated at the table. «Henry,» said Edna, «you needn't go on making cracks about that business.»
«What business?» said he. «What cracks?»
«The way you talked about her 'dancing quality,'» said Edna. «I said this morning you were right. Today, back here, I've been thinking about it, and I'm sorrier than ever. But, Henry, some people can do a fool thing once, and it doesn't mean they don't take standards and things absolutely seriously. It's just being a weak woman. I'm glad you're not a weak woman, Hen.»
«Edna,» said Henry. «There's such a thing as instinct. From our point of view — our old point of view — you were wrong. Because you did what you did without knowing certain things that justified it. As a matter of fact, I've been investigating the whole thing today, and I've discovered that your instinct was perfectly tight.»
«I don't understand,» said Edna.
«Today,» said Henry, with a smile, «I have decided to accept a quite amazing offer for Joyce, I have resigned from the museum, and …»
«What are you saying?» cried Edna. «Do you mean for Joyce to go on the films? No!»
«But yes,» said Henry. «Precisely that. It will develop her. The system is marvellous. I had it out with Fishbein himself. In person. Psychiatrists, dieticians, everything.»
«Stuff and nonsense!» said Edna. «Henry, what's come over you?»
«Do you remember that mink coat?» said Henry.
«Is this some new sort of joke?» said Edna. «But it's not. You're serious. You're telling me that I should let Joyce go into pictures so that I can get a mink coat. You? Henry? Good God, we've been married ten years, and …»
«Don't be silly,» said Henry. «It's not a mink coat. I used that just as a sort of symbol for all sorts of things.»
«And a very good symbol,» said Edna. «No, thank you.» She got up and walked over to the window. «Wait a minute,» said she, turning as Henry began to speak. «This still seems a bit unreal, as if it was in a rather bad play or something. But there it is. You've just smashed everything up. Everything. The way we've lived, the things we've valued — and yourself, too. I don't know who you are. I don't know who I've been living with.»
«This is absurd,» said Henry. «I can see it's no good arguing with you at present. When you hear all the facts, you'll change your mind.»
«Do you think so?» said Edna grimly.
«Whatever you do,» said Henry, «it's settled. I've resigned from the museum. I'm accepting the offer.»
«I am Joyce's mother,» said Edna.
«And I am her father,» said Henry. «And your husband.»
«No,» said Edna. «Good Lord! How funny this is! You might have produced a mistress, you might have taken to drink. We might have had tears and storms and misery for months and years. And still you would have been my husband. And now you say a few silly words, and you're not. You're just not.»
«Keep your voice down,» said Henry. «I heard May come in.»
May came right in to the dining-room. «Did you catch the mail?» said Henry. «My resignation,» he added to Edna.
«You'll have to withdraw it,» said Edna.
«You should have read it,» said he, smiling.
«Yes, sir,» said coloured May, «and that Western Union boy caught me up and give me this here telegram.» She handed the wire to Henry.
«Probably from Hollywood,» said he, as he opened it. There is a huge difference between the way in which people in different walks of life open their telegrams. Henry dealt with this in the superior manner of one already waistcoated in yellow. The telegram stripped him naked. It was from Hollywood all right:
CANCEL ALL I SAID.
FISHBEIN.
THE CHASER
Alan Austen, as nervous as a kitten, went up certain dark and creaky stairs in the neighbourhood of Pell Street, and peered about for a long time on the dim landing before he found the name he wanted written obscurely on one of the doors.
He pushed open this door, as he had been told to do, and found himself in a tiny room, which contained no furniture but a plain kitchen table, rocking chair, and an ordinary chair. On one of the dirty buff-coloured walls were a couple of shelves, containing in all perhaps a dozen bottles and jars. An old man sat in the rocking chair, reading a newspaper. Alan, without a word, handed him the card he had been given. «Sit down, Mr. Austen,» said the old man very politely. «I am glad to make your acquaintance.»
«Is it true,» asked Alan, «that you have a certain mixture that has — er — quite extraordinary effects?»
«My dear sir,» replied the old man, «my stock in trade is not very large — I don't deal in laxatives and teething mixtures — but such as it is, it is varied. I think nothing I sell has effects which could be precisely described as ordinary.»
«Well, the fact is —» began Alan.
«Here, for example,» interrupted the old man reaching for a bottle from the shelf. «Here is a liquid as colourless as water, almost tasteless, quite imperceptible in coffee, milk, wine, or any other beverage. It is also quite imperceptible to any known method of autopsy.»
«Do you mean it is a poison?» cried Alan, very much horrified.
«Call it cleaning fluid if you like,» said the old man indifferently. «Lives need cleaning. Call it a spot-remover. 'Out, damned spot!' Eh? 'Out, brief candle!'»
«I want nothing of that sort,» said Alan.
«Probably it is just as well,» said the old man. «Do you know the price of this? For one teaspoonful, which is sufficient, I ask five thousand dollars. Never less. Not a penny less.»
«I hope all your mixtures are not as expensive,» said Alan apprehensively.
«Oh, dear, no,» said the old man. «It would be no good charging that sort of price for a love potion, for example. Young people who need a love potion very seldom have five thousand dollars. Otherwise they would not need a love potion.»
