“Wouldn’t it be better for her to wear something else?”
“She hasn’t anything else fit to wear at a company dinner except the green poplin Father gave her at Christmas. It’s a lovely dress in itself … Father likes us to have pretty dresses … but you can’t think of anything as awful as Esme in green. Pringle says it makes her look as if she was in the last stages of consumption. And Lennox Carter’s cousin told Esme he would never marry a delicate person. I’m more than glad Johnny isn’t so ‘fastidious.’”
“Have you told your father about your engagement to Johnny yet?” asked Anne, who knew all about Trix’s love affair.
“No,” poor Trix groaned. “I can’t summon up the courage, Anne. I know he’ll make a frightful scene. Papa has always been so down on Johnny because he’s poor. Papa forgets that he was poorer than Johnny when he started out in the hardware business. Of course he’ll have to be told soon … but I want to wait until Esme’s affair is settled. I know Papa won’t speak to any of us for weeks after I tell him, and Mamma will worry so … she can’t bear Father’s sulky fits. We’re all such cowards before Papa. Of course, Mamma and Esme are naturally timid with every one, but Pringle and I have lots of ginger. It’s only Papa who can cow us. Sometimes I think if we had any one to back us up … but we haven’t, and we just feel paralyzed. You can’t imagine, Anne darling, what a company dinner is like at our place when Papa is sulking. But if he only behaves tomorrow night I’ll forgive him for everything. He can be very agreeable when he wants to be … Papa is really just like Longfellow’s little girl … ‘when he’s good he’s very, very good and when he’s bad he’s horrid.’ I’ve seen him the life of the party.”
“He was very nice the night I had dinner with you last month.”
“Oh, he likes you, as I’ve said. That’s one of the reasons why we want you so much. It may have a good influence on him. We’re not neglecting anything that may please him. But when he has a really bad fit of sulks on he seems to hate everything and everybody. Anyhow, we’ve got a bang-up dinner planned, with an elegant orange-custard dessert. Mamma wanted pie because she says every man in the world but Papa likes pie for dessert better than anything else … even Professors of Modern Languages. But Papa doesn’t, so it would never do to take a chance on it tomorrow night, when so much depends on it. Orange custard is Papa’s favorite dessert. As for poor Johnny and me, I suppose I’ll just have to elope with him some day and Papa will never forgive me.
“I believe if you’d just get up enough spunk to tell him and endure his resulting sulks you’d find he’d come round to it beautifully and you’d be saved months of anguish.”
“You don’t know Papa,” said Trix darkly.
“Perhaps I know him better than you do. You’ve lost your perspective.”
“Lost my … what? Anne darling, remember I’m not a B.A. I only went through the High. I’d have loved to go to college, but Papa doesn’t believe in the Higher Education of women.”
“I only meant that you’re too close to him to understand him. A stranger could very well see him more clearly … understand him better.”
“I understand that nothing can induce Papa to speak if he has made up his mind not to … nothing. He prides himself on that.”
“Then why don’t the rest of you just go on and talk as if nothing was the matter?”
“We can’t … I’ve told you he paralyzes us. You’ll find it out for yourself tomorrow night if he hasn’t got over the nightshirt. I don’t know how he does it but he does. I don’t believe we’d mind so much how cranky he was if he would only talk. It’s the silence that shatters us. I’ll never forgive Papa if he acts up tomorrow night when so much is at stake.”
“Let’s hope for the best, dear.”
“I’m trying to. And I know it will help to have you there. Mamma thought we ought to have Katherine Brooke too, but I knew it wouldn’t have a good effect on Papa. He hates her. I don’t blame him for that, I must say. I haven’t any use for her myself. I don’t see how you can be as nice to her as you are.”
“I’m sorry for her, Trix.”
“Sorry for her! But it’s all her own fault she isn’t liked. Oh, well, it takes all kinds of people to make a world … but Summerside could spare Katherine Brooke … glum old cat!”
“She’s an excellent teacher, Trix… .”
“Oh, do I know it? I was in her class. She did hammer things into my head … and flayed the flesh off my bones with sarcasm as well. And the way she dresses! Papa can’t bear to see a woman badly dressed. He says he has no use for dowds and he’s sure God hasn’t either. Mamma would be horrified if she knew I told you that, Anne. She excused it in Papa because he is a man. If that was all we had to excuse in him! And poor Johnny hardly daring to come to the house now because Papa is so rude to him. I slip out on fine nights and we walk round and round the square and get half frozen.”
Anne drew what was something like a breath of relief when Trix had gone, and slipped down to coax a snack out of Rebecca Dew.
“Going to the Taylors for dinner, are you? Well, I hope old Cyrus will be decent. If his family weren’t all so afraid of him in his sulky fits he wouldn’t indulge in them so often, of that I feel certain. I tell you, Miss Shirley, he enjoys his sulks. And now I suppose I must warm That Cat’s milk. Pampered animal!”
Chapter X
When Anne arrived at the Cyrus Taylor house the next evening she felt the chill in the atmosphere as soon as she entered the door. A trim maid showed her up to the guest room but as Anne went up the stairs she caught sight of Mrs. Cyrus Taylor scuttling from the dining-room to the kitchen and Mrs. Cyrus was wiping tears away from her pale, careworn, but still rather sweet face. It was all too clear that Cyrus had not yet “got over” the nightshirt.
This was confirmed by a distressed Trix creeping into the room and whispering nervously,
“Oh, Anne, he’s in a dreadful humor. He seemed pretty amiable this morning and our hopes rose. But Hugh Pringle beat him at a game of checkers this afternoon and Papa can’t bear to lose a checker game. And it had to happen today, of course. He found Esme ‘admiring herself in the mirror,’ as he put it, and just walked her out of her room and locked the door. The poor darling was only wondering if he looked nice enough to please Lennox Carter, Ph.D. She hadn’t even a chance to put her pearl string on. And look at me. I didn’t dare curl my hair … Papa doesn’t like curls that are not natural … and I look like a fright. Not that it matters about me … only it just shows you. Papa threw out the flowers Mamma put on the dining-room table and she feels it so … she took such trouble with them … and he wouldn’t let her put on her garnet earrings. He hasn’t had such a bad spell since he came home from the west last spring and found Mamma had put red curtains in the sitting-room, when he preferred mulberry. Oh, Anne, do talk as hard as you can at dinner, if he won’t. If you don’t, it will be too dreadful.”
“I’ll do my best,” promised Anne, who certainly had never found herself at a loss for something to say. But then never had she found herself in such a situation as presently confronted her.