I
The Deacons were at supper. In the middle of the table was a small, appealing tulip plant, looking as anything would look whose sun was a gas jet. This gas jet was high above the table and flared, with a sound.
"Better turn down the gas jest a little," Mr. Deacon said, and stretched
up to do so. He made this joke almost every night. He seldom spoke as a
man speaks who has something to say, but as a man who makes something to
say.
"Well, what have we on the festive board to-night?" he questioned, eyeing it. "Festive" was his favourite adjective. "Beautiful," too. In October he might be heard asking: "Where's my beautiful fall coat?"
"We have creamed salmon," replied Mrs. Deacon gently. "On toast," she
added, with a scrupulous regard for the whole truth. Why she should say
this so gently no one can tell. She says everything gently. Her "Could
you leave me another bottle of milk this morning?" would wring a
milkman's heart.
"Well, now, let us see," said Mr. Deacon, and attacked the principal
dish benignly. "Let us see," he added, as he served.
"I don't want any," said Monona.
The child Monona was seated upon a book and a cushion, so that her
little triangle of nose rose adultly above her plate. Her remark
produced precisely the effect for which she had passionately hoped.
"What's this?" cried Mr. Deacon. "No salmon?"
"No," said Monona, inflected up, chin pertly pointed. She felt her
power, discarded her "sir."
"Oh now, Pet!" from Mrs. Deacon, on three notes. "You liked it before."
"I don't want any," said Monona, in precisely her original tone.
"Just a little? A very little?" Mr. Deacon persuaded, spoon dripping;
The child Monona made her lips thin and straight and shook her head
until her straight hair flapped in her eyes on either side. Mr. Deacon's
eyes anxiously consulted his wife's eyes. What is this? Their progeny
will not eat? What can be supplied?
"Some bread and milk!" cried Mrs. Deacon brightly, exploding on "bread." One wondered how she thought of it.
"No," said Monona, inflection up, chin the same. She was affecting
indifference to this scene, in which her soul delighted. She twisted
her head, bit her lips unconcernedly, and turned her eyes to the remote.
There emerged from the fringe of things, where she perpetually hovered, Mrs. Deacon's older sister, Lulu Bett, who was "making her home with us." And that was precisely the case. They were not making her a home, goodness knows. Lulu was the family beast of burden.
"Can't I make her a little milk toast?" she asked Mrs. Deacon.
Mrs. Deacon hesitated, not with compunction at accepting Lulu's offer, not diplomatically to lure Monona. But she hesitated habitually, by nature, as another is by nature vivacious or brunette.
"Yes!" shouted the child Monona.
The tension relaxed. Mrs. Deacon assented. Lulu went to the kitchen. Mr. Deacon served on. Something of this scene was enacted every day. For Monona the drama never lost its zest. It never occurred to the others to let her sit without eating, once, as a cure-all. The Deacons were devoted parents and the child Monona was delicate. She had a white, grave face, white hair, white eyebrows, white lashes. She was sullen, anæmic. They let her wear rings. She "toed in." The poor child was the late birth of a late marriage and the principal joy which she had provided them thus far was the pleased reflection that they had produced her at all.
"Where's your mother, Ina?" Mr. Deacon inquired. "Isn't she coming to
her supper?"
"Tantrim," said Mrs. Deacon, softly.
"Oh, ho," said he, and said no more.
The temper of Mrs. Bett, who also lived with them, had days of high
vibration when she absented herself from the table as a kind of
self-indulgence, and no one could persuade her to food. "Tantrims," they
called these occasions.
"Baked potatoes," said Mr. Deacon. "That's good—that's good. The baked potato contains more nourishment than potatoes prepared in any other way. The nourishment is next to the skin. Roasting retains it."
"That's what I always think," said his wife pleasantly.
For fifteen years they had agreed about this.
They ate, in the indecent silence of first savouring food. A delicate
crunching of crust, an odour of baked-potato shells, the slip and touch
of the silver.