But I have antic.i.p.ated; at the moment I looked upon him only as a liability to be balanced in good time by the a.s.set of his father"s position. It was therefore with irritation I listened to his insistence on my coming to the Thario home that afternoon to meet his mother and sisters. I had no desire for purely social intercourse, last evening"s outing being in the nature of a business investment and it seemed superfluous to be forced to extend courtesies to an entire family because of involvement with one member.
However great my reluctance I felt I couldnt afford to risk giving offense and so at fouroclock promptly I was in Georgetown, using the knocker of a door looking like all the other doors on both sides of the street.
"I"m Winifred Thario and youre the chewinggum man--no, wait a minute, I"ll get it--the food concentrate man who"s going to make Joe essential to the war effort. Do come in, and excuse my rudeness. I"m the youngest, you know, except for Joe, so everybody excuses me." Her straight, blond hair looked dead. The vivacity which lit her windburned face seemed a false vivacity and when she showed her large white teeth I thought it was with a calculated effort.
She led me into a livingroom peopled like an Earlyvictorian conversationpiece. Behind a low table, in a rockingchair, sat a large, fullbosomed woman with the same dead hair and weatherbeaten cheeks, the only difference being that the blondness of her hair was mitigated by gray and in her face were the tiny broken red lines which no doubt in time would come to Winifred.
"This is Mama," said Winifred, accenting the second syllable strongly and contriving at once to be vivacious and reverent.
Mama inclined her head toward me without the faintest smile, welcoming or otherwise, placing her hand as she did so regally upon the teacozy, as upon a royal orb.
"Mrs Thario," I said, "I am delighted to meet you."
Mama found this beneath her condescension.
"And this is Constance, the general"s firstborn," introduced Winifred, still retaining her liveliness despite Mama"s low temperature. Constance was the perfect connectinglink between Winifred and her mother, not yet gray but soon to be so, without Winifred"s animation, but with the same voluntary smile showing the same white teeth. She rose and shook my hand as she might have shaken a naughty puppy, with a vigorous sidewise jerk, disengaging the clasp quickly.
"And this," announced Winifred brightly, "is Pauline."
To say that Pauline Thario was beautiful would be like saying Mount Everest is high. In her, the blond hair sparkled like newly threshed straw, the teeth were just as white and even, but they did not seem too large for her mouth, and her complexion was faultless as a cosmetic ad.
She was an unbelievably exquisite painting placed in an appropriate frame.
And yet ... and yet the painting had a quality of unreality about it, as though it were the delineation of a madonna without child, or of a nun.
There was no vigor to her beauty, no touch of the earthiness or of blemish necessary to make the loveliness real and bring it home. She did not offer me her hand, but bowed in a manner only slightly less distant than her mother"s.
I sat down on the edge of a pet.i.tpoint chair, thoroughly illatease. "You must tell us about your pills, Mr Weener," urged Winifred.
"Pills?" I asked, at a loss.
"Yes, the thingamyjigs youre going to have Joe make for you," explained Constance.
Mama made a loud trumpeting noise which so startled me I half rose from my seat. "d.a.m.ned slacker!" she exclaimed, looking fiercely right over my head.
"Now, Mama--bloodpressure," enjoined Pauline in a colorless voice.
Mama relapsed into immobility and Winifred went on, quite as if there had been no explosion. "Are you married, Mr Weener?"
I said I was not.
"Then here"s our chance for Pauline," decided Winifred. "Mr Weener, how would you like to marry Pauline?"
I could do nothing but smile uncomfortably. Was this the sort of conversation habitually carried on in their circle or were they quite mad? Constance mentioned with apparent irrelevance, "Winifred is so giddy," and Pauline smiled at me understandingly.
But Winifred went on, "Weve been trying to marry Pauline off for years, you know. She"s wonderful to look at, but she hasnt any s.e.xappeal."
Mama snorted, "d.a.m.ned vulgar thing to have."
"Would you like some tea, Mr Weener?" asked Constance.
"Tea! He looks like a secret cocacola guzzler to me! Are you an American Mr Uh?" Mama demanded fiercely, deigning for the first time to address me.
"I was born in California, Mrs Thario," I a.s.sured her.
"Pity. Pity. d.a.m.ned shame," she muttered.
I was partially relieved from my uneasiness by the appearance of George Thario, who bounded in, waved lightly at his sisters and kissed his mother just below her hairline. "My respectful duty, Mama," he greeted.
"d.a.m.ned hypocrisy. You did your duty youd be in the army."
"Bloodpressure," warned Constance.
"Have they made you thoroughly miserable, Mr Weener? Don"t mind them--there"s something wrong with all the Tharios except the Old Man.
Blood gone thin from too much intermarriage."
"Just like incest," exclaimed Winifred. "Don"t you think incest"s fascinating, Mr Weener? Eugene O"Neill and all that sort of thing?"
"Morbid," objected Constance.
"d.a.m.ned nonsense," grunted Mama.
"Cream or lemon, Mr Weener?" inquired Constance. Mama, moved by a hospitable reflex, filled a grudging cup.
"Cream, please," I requested.
"Turn it sour," muttered Mama, but she poured the cream and handed the cup to Constance who pa.s.sed it to Pauline who gave it to me with a gracious smile.
"You just mustnt forget to keep Pauline in mind, Mr Weener; she would be a terrific help when you become horribly rich and have to do a lot of stuffy entertaining."
"Really, Winifred," protested Constance.
"Help him to the poorhouse and a d.a.m.ned good riddance."
I spent another uneasy fifteen minutes before I could decently make my departure, wondering whether I hadnt made a mistake in becoming involved with the Tharios at all. But there being no question of the solidity of the general"s position, I decided, since it was not afterall inc.u.mbent upon me to continue a social connection with them, to bear with it and confine my acquaintance as far as possible to Joe and his father.
_42._ As soon as the contracts were awarded the struggle began to obtain necessary labor and raw materials. We were straining everything to do a patriotic service to the country in time of war, but we came up against the compet.i.tion for these essentials by ruthless capitalists who had no thought but to milk the government by selling them supplies at an enormous profit. Even with the wholehearted a.s.sistance of General Thario it was an endless and painful task to comply with, break through, or evade the restrictions and regulations thrown up by an uncertain and slowmoving administration, restrictions designed to aid our compet.i.tors and hamper us. Yet we got organized at last and by the time three Russian marshals had been purged and the American highcommand had been shaken up several times, we had doubled the capacity of our plant and were negotiating the purchase of a new factory in Florida.
I set aside a block of stock for the general, but its transfer was a delicate matter on account of the indefatigable nosiness of the government and I approached his son for advice. "Alberich!" exclaimed Joe incomprehensibly. "Just wrap it up and mail it to him. Mama, G.o.d bless her, takes care of all financial transactions anyway." And doubtless with great force, I thought.
Such directness, I pointed out, might have embarra.s.sing repercussions because of inevitably smallminded interpretation if the facts ever became public. We finally solved the problem by putting the gift in George Thario"s name, he making a will leaving it to the general. I informed his father in a guarded letter of what we had done and he replied at great length and somewhat indiscreetly, as the following quotation may show:
"... In spite of pulling every handy and unhandy wire I am still billeted on this ridiculous desk. The General Staff is the most incompetent set of blunderers ever to wear military uniform since Bull Run. They"ve never heard of Foch, much less of Falkenhayn and Mackensen, to say nothing of Rommel, Guderian or Montgomery. They rest idly behind their Washington breastworks when the order of the day should be attack, attack, and again attack; keeping the combat entirely verbal, weakening the spirit of our forces and waiting supinely for the enemy to bring the war to us...."
Although I was too much occupied with the press of business to follow the daytoday progress of hostilities, there was little doubt the general was justified in his strictures. The war was entirely static. With fear of raids by marauding aircraft allayed, the only remaining uneasiness of the public had been whether the words "heavier than air craft" covered robot or V bombs. But when weeks had pa.s.sed without these dreadful missiles whistling downward, this anxiety also went and the country settled down to enjoy a wartime prosperity as pleasant, notwithstanding the fiftyhour week, rationing, and the exorbitant incometax, as the peacetime panic had been miserable. In my own case Consolidated Pemmican was quoted at 38 and I was on my way, in spite of all hampering circ.u.mstances, to reap the benefits of foresight and industry. Unique among great combats, not a shot had so far been exchanged and everyone, except cranks, began to look upon the academic conflict as an unalloyed benefit.
Gradually the war began leaving the frontpages, military a.n.a.lysts found themselves next to either the chessproblems, Today"s Selected Recipe, or the weekly horoscope; people once more began to concern themselves with the gra.s.s. It now extended in a vast sweep from a point on the Mexican coast below the town of Mazatlan, northward along the slope of the Rocky Mountains up into Canada"s Yukon Province. It was wildest at its point of origin, covering Southern California and Nevada, Arizona and part of New Mexico, and it was narrowest in the north where it dabbled with delicate fingers at the mouth of the Mackenzie River. It had spared practically all of Alaska, nearly all of British Columbia, most of Washington, western Oregon and the seacoast of northern California.
Why it surged up to the Rockies and not over them when it had conquered individually higher mountains was not understood, but people were quick once more to take hope and remember the plant"s normal distaste for cold or think there was perhaps something in the rarefied atmosphere to paralyze the seeds or inhibit the stolons, so preventing further progress. Even through the comparatively low pa.s.ses it came at such a slow pace methods tried fruitlessly in Los Angeles were successful in keeping it back. Everyone was quite ready to wipe off the Far West if the gra.s.s were going to spare the rest of the country.