“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.
They were all gathered around the table … a very pretty and well appointed table in spite of the missing flowers. Timid Mrs. Cyrus, in a gray silk dress, had a face that was grayer than her dress. Esme, the beauty of the family … a very pale beauty, pale gold hair, pale pink lips, pale forget-me-not eyes … was so much paler than usual that she looked as if she were going to faint. Pringle, ordinarily a fat, cheerful urchin of fourteen, with round eyes and glasses and hair so fair it looked almost white, looked like a tied dog, and Trix had the air of a terrified schoolgirl.
Dr. Carter, who was undeniably handsome and distinguished-looking, with crisp dark hair, brilliant dark eyes and silver-rimmed glasses, but whom Anne, in the days of his Assistant Professorship at Redmond, had thought a rather pompous young bore, looked ill at ease. Evidently he felt that something was wrong somewhere … a reasonable conclusion when your host simply stalks to the head of the table and drops into his chair without a word to you or anybody.
Cyrus would not say grace. Mrs. Cyrus, blushing beet-red, murmured almost inaudibly, “For what we are about to receive the Lord make us truly thankful.” The meal started badly by nervous Esme dropping her fork on the floor. Everybody except Cyrus jumped, because their nerves were likewise keyed up to the highest pitch. Cyrus glared at Esme out of his bulging blue eyes in a kind of enraged stillness. Then he glared at everybody and froze them into dumbness. He glared at poor Mrs. Cyrus, when she took a helping of horseradish sauce, with a glare that reminded her of her weak stomach. She couldn’t eat any of it after that … and she was so fond of it. She didn’t believe it would hurt her. But for that matter she couldn’t eat anything, nor could Esme. They only pretended. The meal proceeded in a ghastly silence, broken by spasmodic speeches about the weather from Trix and Anne. Trix implored Anne with her eyes to talk, but Anne found herself for once in her life with absolutely nothing to say. She felt desperately that she must talk, but only the most idiotic things came into her head … things it would be impossible to utter aloud. Was everyone bewitched? It was curious, the effect one sulky, stubborn man had on you. Anne couldn’t have believed it possible. And there was no doubt that he was really quite happy in the knowledge that he had made everybody at his table horribly uncomfortable. What on earth was going on in his mind? Would he jump if any one stuck a pin in him? Anne wanted to slap him … rap his knuckles … stand him in a corner … treat him like the spoiled child he really was, in spite of his spiky gray hair and truculent mustache.
Above all she wanted to make him speak. She felt instinctively that nothing in the world would punish him so much as to be tricked into speaking when he was determined not to.
Suppose she got up and deliberately smashed that huge, hideous, old-fashioned vase on the table in the corner … an ornate thing covered with wreaths of roses and leaves which it was most difficult to dust but which must be kept immaculately clean. Anne knew that the whole family hated it, but Cyrus Taylor would not hear of having it banished to the attic, because it had been his mother’s. Anne thought she would do it fearlessly if she really believed that it would make Cyrus explode into vocal anger.
Why didn’t Lennox Carter talk? If he would, she, Anne, could talk, too, and perhaps Trix and Pringle would escape from the spell that bound them and some kind of conversation would be possible. But he simply sat there and ate. Perhaps he thought it was really the best thing to do … perhaps he was afraid of saying something that would still further enrage the evidently already enraged parent of his lady.
“Will you please start the pickles, Miss Shirley?” said Mrs. Taylor faintly.
Something wicked stirred in Anne. She started the pickles … and something else. Without letting herself stop to think she bent forward, her great, gray-green eyes glimmering limpidly, and said gently,
“Perhaps you would be surprised to hear, Dr. Carter, that Mr. Taylor went deaf very suddenly last week?”
Anne sat back, having thrown her bomb. She could not tell precisely what she expected or hoped. If Dr. Carter got the impression that his host was deaf instead of in a towering rage of silence, it might loosen his tongue. She had not told a falsehood … she had not said Cyrus Taylor was deaf. As for Cyrus Taylor, if she had hoped to make him speak she had failed. He merely glared at her, still in silence.
But Anne’s remark had an effect on Trix and Pringle that she had never dreamed of. Trix was in a silent rage herself. She had, the moment before Anne had hurled her rhetorical question, seen Esme furtively wipe away a tear that had escaped from one of her despairing blue eyes. Everything was hopeless … Lennox Carter would never ask Esme to marry him now … it didn’t matter any more what any one said or did. Trix was suddenly possessed with a burning desire to get square with her brutal father. Anne’s speech gave her a weird inspiration, and Pringle, a volcano of suppressed impishness, blinked his white eyelashes for a dazed moment and then promptly followed her lead. Never, as long as they might live, would Anne, Esme or Mrs. Cyrus forget the dreadful quarter of an hour that followed.
“Such an affliction for poor papa,” said Trix, addressing Dr. Carter across the table. “And him only sixty-eight.”
Two little white dents appeared at the corners of Cyrus Taylor’s nostrils when he heard his age advanced six years. But he remained silent.
“It’s such a treat to have a decent meal,” said Pringle, clearly and distinctly. “What would you think, Dr. Carter, of a man who makes his family live on fruit and eggs … nothing but fruit and eggs … just for a fad?”
“Does your father … ?” began Dr. Carter bewilderedly.
“What would you think of a husband who bit his wife when she put up curtains he didn’t like … deliberately bit her?” demanded Trix.
“Till the blood came,” added Pringle solemnly.
“Do you mean to say your father … ?”
“What would you think of a man who would cut up a silk dress of his wife’s just because the way it was made didn’t suit him?” said Trix.
“What would you think,” said Pringle, “of a man who refuses to let his wife have a dog?”
“When she would so love to have one,” sighed Trix.
“What would you think of a man,” continued Pringle, who was beginning to enjoy himself hugely, “who would give his wife a pair of goloshes for a Christmas present … nothing but a pair of goloshes?”
“Goloshes don’t exactly warm the heart,” admitted Dr. Carter. His eyes met Anne’s and he smiled. Anne reflected that she had never seen him smile before. It changed his face wonderfully for the better. What was Trix saying? Who would have thought she could be such a demon?
“Have you ever wondered, Dr. Carter, how awful it must be to live with a man who thinks nothing … nothing — of picking up the roast, if it isn’t perfectly