Evening Star Newspaper, July 5, 1931, Page 63

TON, -D. C., JULY S, ‘1981, ° At this Mrs. Massey cut In, looking pretty 11 and they get to thinking she means more.than f Story ofMar)/s'- Nek—BY BOOTH TARKINGTON imself between us.” consideration for each other. Each of them said it was absolutely her own little boy’s fault. Mrs. Griggs said she would make her Brockie apologize to Paulie and Mrs. Timberlake said no, her Paulie must apologize to Brockie, and they kept on like this until after a while Mrs. Griggs went off to join her husband and Brockie and Mrs. Timberlake turned to me. I'd got up when the fight started and was standing beside her. She shook her head kind of mournfully. “Of course, everybody tries to be nice to her about poor little Brockie,” Mrs. Timberlake said. “He goes into terrible rages if any other child pos- sesses a plaything that he doesn’t own himself, and I think it's about time they had a psy- chiatrist go over him!” Mr. Timberlake was whistling for her from where he had Paulie in their car on the road beyond the beach, so they drove off home and pretty soon Mrs. Griggs came back and asked me where they'd gone. I told her and she gave a kind of pitying grunt and shook her head. “It's no wonder that child can’t control himself,” she said. “He broke the propeller of his horrible motor boat yesterday and already they've sent their chauffeur to Lodgeport to get him a new one. What can you expect of a child that’s simply ruined by his own par- ents?” Well, she went on wondering what parents could be made of to be so selfishly indulgent toward a child as to provide him with a play- thing that made life hideous for their friends and neighbors and actually depreciated the value of real estate at the Neck. She talked with a good deal of vigor and quite a long while about the raising of children, and it was pretty clear she thought she was an au- thority on that and maybe any other subject. She was a large woman with a nose you could sce she held pretty high, and this was the first I'd had much conversation with her. I felt a little uncomfortable because a good deal of the time while she was laying down the law on the raising of children I kept think- ing about her other son, Pembroke, who had been going about with our older daughter, Clarissa, considerably. Pembroke had been in college somewhere, but said he wasn't going back next year because the dean was always trying to be revenged on him for something or other. © I thought Pembroke had fairly poor pcrch manners when older people were around, and altogether I couldn't see him as an al- mighty example of success in the raising of children. I was still thinking about Mrs. Griggs and this talk of hers, when Mrs. Massey broke out right suddenly, as we were driving home, and said, with sort of a snort, you might call it: “I never did like that woman!” “well,” I said, “I didn't take any too violent a fancy to her myself. She strikes me as bcing a little frosty about other people and having quite a notion of her own importance, but I might be wrong, because I never had any special talk with her until todav.” RS. MASSEY cut me off. “I'm not talk- ing about Mrs. Griggs. I mean Mrs. Bull- finch. and I don’t intend to sit with the Bullfinches any more at the beach. She's a perfectly outrageous woman! She practically accused Enid to our very faces of taking ad- vantage of Eddie Bulifinch’s good nature, ‘using’ him, leading him astray, so that entirely through his poor masculine weakness and being played upon by Enid he got the younger boys to make this deafening uproar that’s madden- ing the harbor cottagers. It's exactly what that woman had just been around telling all those people. She certainly gave that away! Why, she’s acted like a perfect fiend, and now, just because Enid has been sweet and tolerant enough to play around a little with that: half- witted Eddie, the poor child is being blamed for starting this whole horrible commotion!” It seemed to me that Mrs. Massey was right and her way of putting it certainly caused me to feel a good deal of indignation, too, especially about the way Mrs, Bullfinch had pretty well implied that Eddie was somehow being victimized by our Enid. Enid is a right superjor girl and, of course, she only puts up with Eddie and romps with him a good deal ‘the way she does sometimes : with our little spaniel dog Plute. As for the boy himself, I've sometimes felt a feeble kind of leaning toward him, when I was able to forget his parents. Anyhow? I liked him better than I did Pem- broke Griggs, and it seemed to me I never did know Clarissa to waste her time as puzzling as she did this Summer going about with that fat- faced young ex-collegian. I'm mentioning this peculiar affair of Clerissa and Pemmie Griggs because it's really right on the subject I've been talking about in relating the trouble in the harbor over the noise. It's kind of a family matter to go into, but I can hardly show you how it connects up with the harbor trouble unless I let you have somé more cetails about Clarissa and Pemmie. You see, there isn't a sweeter, finer girl any- where than Clarissa—mighty pretty and light- hearted and with kind of fascinating little ways about her. I declare, it reminded me of Beauty and the Beast to see her shooting off for some- where, in the roadster I'd given her with that pudgy chunk of a Pemmie Griggs beside her. You can’t tell the back of his head from one of these balls they use in a bowling alley, except it doesn’t have any holes in it; and I suppose I haven't marveled much more over anything in my life than over how a dainty, bright, witty girl like Clarissa could spend all the time she did with that lump. I was talking about this with Mrs. Massey, saying how queer it was that both of our girls were besieged and followed around by such inferior riffraff, and how baffling it was that they both seemed to tolerate it, when we drove up to the porch of our cottage, and there was Clarissa sitting on a bench with Pemmie Griggs. What gave me quite a turn was it seemed to me she made a quick motion just as the car stopped at the steps, as if she'd been letting him hold her hand and jerked it away . when she saw her mother and me. It looked a good deal like that and I couldn’t get over the idea. It kept bothering me all through Ilunch, especially as Clarissa invited Pemmie to stay and sat next to him, and they had what struck me as a pretty sloppy air toward each other. Pemmie didn’t have anything to say—he never does have—at least not with older people around. He just ate and kept giving side glances at Clarissa with his mouth full I couldn’t understand why it didn’t make her sick, but it didn’'t seem to. After lunch they slid out in her car and she didn't come home to dinner. She tele- phoned that she and Pemmie had driven all the way to Lodgeport and were dining there at the inn and would drive home by moonlight. I don't know what time she got in, because I didn't have the heart to. I didn't want to know. And the next day and the.next it was about the same program. Then I complained pretty sharply to Mrs. Massey. “Good gracious!” she said when I got through. “You don't suppose I haven't tried to stop it all I could, do you?” Right there this thing about Clarissa began to worry me more than the noise from the harbor did, that seemed to be getting a good many people wilder and wilder, and before red: “You mean disappointment for my daugh- ter—and, perhaps, for my husband and me, Mrs. Griggs?” “That is what Mr. Griggs and I have felt it our duty to avoid,” Mrs. Griggs said, seeming to be more affable. “And let me add at once that Mr. Griggs and I have not blamed your daughter in the slightest degree, nor have we criticized you and Mr. Massey for encouraging Pembroke to come here as much as he does.” “You haven’t?” Mrs. Massey asked her, and didn’t seem able to say anything further for the moment on account of being too choked-up. “Not at all,” Mrs. Griggs said, looking real pleasant and gracious. “We blame Pembroke entirely.” “What for?” Mrs. Massey asked her pretty stifly. “What do you blame your son for, Mrs. Griggs?” “Why, for allowing this situation to come about, Mrs. Griggs?” “What situation?” Mrs. Griggs began to get red herself, because Mrs. Massey’s voice was pretty spiky. “I think you understand very well what situation I mean, Since you ask for perfect frankness, I will admit that just at the present time Pembroke’s sus- ceptibility is temporarily so excited that neither his father nor I can do anything with him, but we have been through these affairs before when girls have seemed to obtain such a hold on him that they believed it would be perma- nent. never is, and I have come to you mainly on your daughter’s account. If I could persuade you to join Mr. Griggs and me in discouraging this affair——" But by this time I'd got my voice back.’ “What makes you think we've been encouraging it?” I asked her. “And, also, where’d you get the idea my daughter wants any old hold on your son?” I guess I must have sounded right sharp, be- cause the first thing she sald was that she wasn't accustomed to being addressed in that manner and then appeared almost to lose her temper. Everybody knew, she said, that Pem- broke Brockton Griggs was the most desirable young man in the place. With his historical ancestry added to his looks, every girl at the Neck had, of course, set her cap at him, and girls knew very well nowadays how to make young men silly. “Temporarily!” she added, warningly. “Only temporarily!” I disregarded what she said about her son’s looks. She was his mother and I knew it wouldn’t do any good to discuss Pembroke’s looks with her. I took up the question of his historical importance that she'd spoken of. *I don’t think it would enter into our calcula- tions,” I told her, “or Clarissa’s either—because none of us knew he had any, Mrs. Griggs.” She looked at me the way a teacher does at a pupil who can’t spell “cow,” and I could see that she hardly believed me. Then all of a sudden I remembered Mr. Timberlake’s telling me once that the Griggses had always con- sidered themselves kind of a sacred family be- “She was a large woman with a nose you could see she held pretty high.” Jong T just couldn’t stand the sight of Pemmie Griggs at all. The worst of it was I knew better than to express myself about him to Clarissa, because, of course, that would only make her more so, as I'd found out on previous occasions. All Mrs. Massey and I could do was to sit and tell each other what we thought of Pemmie, which didn't afford any great relief. HEN one afternoon we got a surprise. Mrs, Griggs called, all dressed up, and the first thing she said was that she was glad to find us at home together, with the young people not around, because she had something serious to say. “Mr. Griggs and I have thought it best for me to come to you frankly,” she told us. “We think you must see yourselves that noth- ing can be accomplished without absolute frank- ness between us. Frankly, then, our son Pem- broke has the weakness of being of a very susceptible nature, and, of course, it sometimes rouses mistaken ideas. I'm sure that you are both sensible enough, Mr. and Mrs. Massey, to realize that-an interference in time may prevent [ zt'e.at‘ded of distress and disappointment cause Mrs. Griggs had 2 great-grandfather or something that made quite a famous speech in Congress, denouncing England, during the War of 1812. From her expression, you could tell she thought even a family from the Middle West would know all about that, and I saw it wouldn’t be of much use to go on with the subject. I thought I'd better be as frank as she said she was. “I'm glad you feel your son's susceptibility is only temporary,” I told her, “because if our daughter’s got any for him, it's certainly tem- porarier!” “Yes!” Mrs. Massey thought fit to add. “And if we weren't sure of that, we'd feel a good “Exactly,” Mrs. Massey told her, and she laughed in a sharpish kind of way and went on: “We can't take you seriously, Mrs. Griggs, she does, until her father and I can just barely stand it. But she always gets bored by their hanging around her the silly way they do.- You can be absolutely certain she isn’t going to let poor Pemmie last much longer with her, Mrs. Griggs.” Well, I think Mrs, Griggs was sorry she came; she certainly got her comeuppance. She went out locking pretty sore, and it's a fact that without our having said & word to Clar- issa about this interview, Mrs. Massey turned out to be a pretlty good prophet. The very next morning, on the beach, a nasty feist of an Irish terrier belonging to the Griggses and named Larkie, pick?d on our perfectly inoffen- sive, sweet-tempered spaniel, Pluto, and tried to tear him to pieces. LARRISA dashed right into the fight, grabbed up Pluto in her arms and to run away with him to save him from Larkie, but Larkie kept leaping and snapping at poor little Pluto; and then just before I reached them (I'd jumped up and was coming to help) the vicious little beast turned his attentiom to Clarissa and bit her in the ankle—really bit her, too; it was worse than a scratch. I tried to kick Larkie, but tried too hard for much success, and just then Pemmie Griggs came up, took Larkie by the collar and put himself between us. “Cut that out!” he said to me, pretty fresh, and turned to Clarissa. He didn’t say any- thing about her being hurt or apologize for what his dog had done to her; it seems to me one of the craziest things in the world, the way people are about their own dogs. “I told you-you'd better keep that old cur of yours on a leash!” Pemmie said to Clarissa. “I told you he’'d get in trouble if you didn't!” Clarissa was so angry she was almost cry- ing. “What about me? Ought I to have been on a leash, too?” As Mrs. Massey had foretold, the last of Pemmie for Clarissa came pretty quick. As she walked away with me, he heard her use the expression “Fat-face!” and asked her what she meant by it. She made a pretty definite reply, which I'd hardly like to repeat; but she was in pain from her ankle, and excusable, I think. The gist of it was that Pemmie had better take his dog and go home and stay there. She'd never be able to look at either of them again, she intimated, without becom- ing indisposed. Mrs. Massey hadn’t come to the beach thet morning. She was out for lunch, too, and it was late in the afternoon before she got back ard I was able to talk over this ruckus. “Thank goodness, we're all through with that War of 1812 bowling ball!” I told her. But Mrs. Massey shook her head; she looked badly disturbed. “That woman has an awful tongue,” she said. “I saw Mrs. Ruckleboys this afternoon and she told me Mrs. Griggs- was already going around spreading the word that Clarissa had spent the whole Summer’ trying to ensnare Pemmie, but was so open about it that he'd finally decided to stay away from her altogether in order to be let alone!” Well, of course that made me pretty hot, and I said I'd go right down to the Griggses’ and have the libel retracted, but we talked it over- and saw it wouldn't do any good. There wasn't anything at all we could do and so after awhile I went out to try and walk oft some of my state of mind in the open air. I hadn’t gone a hundred yards before Eddie Bullfinch went tearing by me on his motor- cycle, with Enid in the side car thing they'd fixed up together, and I got a shock that brought my heart into my throat. There was a boy on 2 bicycle coming to- ward them. He got rattled and wobbled over to the middle of the road and they almos: ran into him, but they swerved and missed- him by about half an inch. It made me pretty nearly sick, I was so scared, and when the boy on the bicycle came by me I gave Bim a sour look. “Crazy idiot!” I thought, because, of course, if they’d hit him, nobody knows how badly- Enid might have been hurt. ‘“What's more,” I went on thinking, with a good deal of indig-- nation, “the boy’s mother would probably have put part of the blame on her, and as for the. Bullfinch family, they’d have claimed Enid was responsible for the whole thing!” Of course, the boy’s mother would have insisted - he was the worst hurt, being on a bicycle, and likely she’d have made a terrible fuss. “People don't seem to be able to use their reason or common sense at all,” I thought— “not in any matter that concerns their own children!” Well, sir, all at once it struck me that this conclusion I'd just come to might be applied to myself, and when I did it, you may not believe me but I was considerably startled. - It seemed to me I'd made a pretty remarkable” discovery. What happened to Enid would have looked lke a mighty minor catastrophe to the boy's mother, of course, and I had to admit the chances were he actually would have been a good deal the worst hurt, so his mother might have been perfectly justified in the fuss she'd have made. Moreover, the Bullfinches would’ have believed sineerely that it was Enid’s influ- ence over Eddie that got him to running too fast and, going on thinking, I carried this- strange new jdea of mine a little farther. . ‘When Mrs. Griggs looked at her Pemmie she didn’t see the bowling alley ball that Mrs. Massey and I saw when we looked at him. She saw something lovely, and when she._ looked at Clarissa she didn’'t see what Mrs, Massey and I did at all. Well, then, what really were all these children? Were they what their own families saw when they lookcd at ‘em, or were they what other families saw when they looked at ‘em, or maybe were they both—or maybe weren't they either? was a question that had me stopped, still thinking about it, I went on down to the little old wharf and sat on the