Poppleton, who has a summer place of his own, looked at the gates very critically.
"Now, do you know what _I"d_ have done with those gates, if they were mine?" he said.
"No," said Beverly-Jones.
"I"d have set them two feet wider apart; they"re too narrow, old chap, too narrow." Poppleton shook his head sadly at the gates.
"We had quite a struggle," said Beverly-Jones, "before we finally decided on sandstone."
I realized that he had one and the same line of talk that he always used. I resented it. No wonder it was easy for him. "Great mistake,"
said Poppleton. "Too soft. Look at this"--here he picked up a big stone and began pounding at the gate-post--"see how easily it chips! Smashes right off. Look at that, the whole corner knocks right off, see!"
Beverly-Jones entered no protest. I began to see that there is a sort of understanding, a kind of freemasonry, among men who have summer places.
One shows his things; the other runs them down, and smashes them. This makes the whole thing easy at once. Beverly-Jones showed his lawn.
"Your turf is all wrong, old boy," said Poppleton. "Look! it has no body to it. See, I can kick holes in it with my heel. Look at that, and that!
If I had on stronger boots I could kick this lawn all to pieces."
"These geraniums along the border," said Beverly-Jones, "are rather an experiment. They"re Dutch."
"But my dear fellow," said Poppleton, "you"ve got them set in wrongly.
They ought to slope _from_ the sun you know, never _to_ it. Wait a bit"--here he picked up a spade that was lying where a gardener had been working--"I"ll throw a few out. Notice how easily they come up. Ah, that fellow broke! They"re apt to. There, I won"t bother to reset them, but tell your man to slope them over from the sun. That"s the idea."
Beverly-Jones showed his new boat-house next and Poppleton knocked a hole in the side with a hammer to show that the lumber was too thin.
"If that were _my_ boat-house," he said, "I"d rip the outside clean off it and use shingle and stucco."
It was, I noticed, Poppleton"s plan first to imagine Beverly-Jones"s things his own, and then to smash them, and then give them back smashed to Beverly-Jones. This seemed to please them both. Apparently it is a well-understood method of entertaining a guest and being entertained.
Beverly-Jones and Poppleton, after an hour or so of it, were delighted with one another.
Yet somehow, when I tried it myself, it failed to work.
"Do you know what I would do with that cedar summer-house if it was mine?" I asked my host the next day.
"No," he said.
"I"d knock the thing down and burn it," I answered.
But I think I must have said it too fiercely. Beverly-Jones looked hurt and said nothing.
Not that these people are not doing all they can for me. I know that.
I admit it. If I _should_ meet my end here and if--to put the thing straight out--_my_ lifeless body is found floating on the surface of this pond, I should like there to be doc.u.mentary evidence of _that_ much. They are trying their best. "This is Liberty Hall," Mrs.
Beverly-Jones said to me on the first day of my visit. "We want you to feel that you are to do absolutely as you like!"
Absolutely as I like! How little they know me. I should like to have answered: "Madam, I have now reached a time of life when human society at breakfast is impossible to me; when any conversation prior to eleven a.m. must be considered out of the question; when I prefer to eat my meals in quiet, or with such mild hilarity as can be got from a comic paper; when I can no longer wear nankeen pants and a coloured blazer without a sense of personal indignity; when I can no longer leap and play in the water like a young fish; when I do not yodel, cannot sing and, to my regret; dance even worse than I did when young; and when the mood of mirth and hilarity comes to me only as a rare visitant--shall we say at a burlesque performance--and never as a daily part of my existence. Madam, I am unfit to be a summer guest. If this is Liberty Hall indeed, let me, oh, let me go!"
Such is the speech that I would make if it were possible. As it is, I can only rehea.r.s.e it to myself.
Indeed, the more I a.n.a.lyse it the more impossible it seems, for a man of my temperament at any rate, to be a summer guest. These people, and, I imagine, all other summer people, seem to be trying to live in a perpetual joke. Everything, all day, has to be taken in a mood of uproarious fun.
However, I can speak of it all now in quiet retrospect and without bitterness. It will soon be over now. Indeed, the reason why I have come down at this early hour to this quiet water is that things have reached a crisis. The situation has become extreme and I must end it.
It happened last night. Beverly-Jones took me aside while the others were dancing the fox-trot to the victrola on the piazza.
"We"re planning to have some rather good fun to-morrow night," he said, "something that will be a good deal more in your line than a lot of it, I"m afraid, has been up here. In fact, my wife says that this will be the very thing for you."
"Oh," I said.
"We"re going to get all the people from the other houses over and the girls"--this term Beverly-Jones uses to mean his wife and her friends--"are going to get up a sort of entertainment with charades and things, all impromptu, more or less, of course--"
"Oh," I said. I saw already what was coming.
"And they want you to act as a sort of master-of-ceremonies, to make up the gags and introduce the different stunts and all that. I was telling the girls about that afternoon at the club, when you were simply killing us all with those funny stories of yours, and they"re all wild over it."
"Wild?" I repeated.
"Yes, quite wild over it. They say it will be the hit of the summer."
Beverly-Jones shook hands with great warmth as we parted for the night. I knew that he was thinking that my character was about to be triumphantly vindicated, and that he was glad for my sake.
Last night I did not sleep. I remained awake all night thinking of the "entertainment." In my whole life I have done nothing in public except once when I presented a walking-stick to the vice-president of our club on the occasion of his taking a trip to Europe. Even for that I used to rehea.r.s.e to myself far into the night sentences that began: "This walking-stick, gentleman, means far more than a mere walking-stick."
And now they expect me to come out as a merry master-of-ceremonies before an a.s.sembled crowd of summer guests.
But never mind. It is nearly over now. I have come down to this quiet water in the early morning to throw myself in. They will find me floating here among the lilies. Some few will understand. I can see it written, as it will be, in the newspapers.
"What makes the sad fatality doubly poignant is that the unhappy victim had just entered upon a holiday visit that was to have been prolonged throughout the whole month. Needless to say, he was regarded as the life and soul of the pleasant party of holiday makers that had gathered at the delightful country home of Mr. and Mrs. Beverly-Jones. Indeed, on the very day of the tragedy, he was to have taken a leading part in staging a merry performance of charades and parlour entertainments--a thing for which his genial talents and overflowing high spirits rendered him specially fit."
When they read that, those who know me best will understand how and why I died. "He had still over three weeks to stay there," they will say.
"He was to act as the stage manager of charades." They will shake their heads. They will understand.
But what is this? I raise my eyes from the paper and I see Beverly-Jones hurriedly approaching from the house. He is hastily dressed, with flannel trousers and a dressing-gown. His face looks grave. Something has happened. Thank G.o.d, something has happened. Some accident! Some tragedy! Something to prevent the charades!
I write these few lines on a fast train that is carrying me back to New York, a cool, comfortable train, with a deserted club-car where I can sit in a leather arm-chair, with my feet up on another, smoking, silent, and at peace.
Villages, farms and summer places are flying by. Let them fly. I, too, am flying--back to the rest and quiet of the city.
"Old man," Beverly-Jones said, as he laid his hand on mine very kindly--he is a decent fellow, after all, is Jones--"they"re calling you by long-distance from New York."
"What is it?" I asked, or tried to gasp.
"It"s bad news, old chap; fire in your office last evening. I"m afraid a lot of your private papers were burned. Robinson--that"s your senior clerk, isn"t it?--seems to have been on the spot trying to save things.
He"s badly singed about the face and hands. I"m afraid you must go at once."
"Yes, yes," I said, "at once."
"I know. I"ve told the man to get the trap ready right away. You"ve just time to catch the seven-ten. Come along."