Miller / Nemo Essential Novelists - Alice Duer Miller

Are women people?
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-96944-896-0
Verlag: Tacet Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 176, 136 Seiten

Reihe: Essential Novelists

Welcome to the Essential Novelists book series, were we present to you the best works of remarkable authors. For this book, the literary critic August Nemo has chosen the two most important and meaningful novels of Alice Duer Miller which are Come Out of the Kitchen! and The Beauty and the Bolshevist. Alice Duer Miller was a writer from the U.S. whose poetry actively influenced political opinion. She became known as a campaigner for women's suffrage and published a brilliant series of satirical poems in the New York Tribune. These were published subsequently as Are Women People?. These words became a catchphrase of the suffrage movement. Novels selected for this book: Come Out of the Kitchen! The Beauty and the Bolshevist. This is one of many books in the series Essential Novelists. If you liked this book, look for the other titles in the series, we are sure you will like some of the authors.

Alice Duer Miller (July 28, 1874 August 22, 1942) was a writer from the U.S. whose poetry actively influenced political opinion. Her feminist verses made an impact on the suffrage issue, and her verse novel The White Cliffs encouraged U.S. entry into World War II. She also wrote novels and screenplays.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Miller, Alice Duer

Nemo, August

Leseproben

VII

HE did not get back until almost dinner time. The meal was not an agreeable one, though Jane-Ellen's part of the performance was no less perfectly achieved than usual. It was evident that there had been a scene between the two ladies. Cora's eyes were distinctly red, and though Mrs. Falkener's bore no such evidence, she looked more haggard than was her wont. Tucker was still feeling somewhat imposed upon, Smithfield's manner suggested a dignified rebuke, Crane felt no inclination to lighten the general tone, and altogether the occasion was dreary in the extreme.

As soon as they had had coffee, Cora sat down at the piano, and drawing Burton to her by a request for more light, she whispered:

"Won't you take me out in the garden? I have something I must say to you."

Crane acquiesced. It was a splendid, misty November night. The moonlight was of that sea-green color which, so often represented on the stage, is seldom seen in nature. The moon concealed the bareness of the garden-beds, lent a suggestion of mystery to the thickets of what had once been flowering shrubs, and made the columns of the piazza, which in the daytime showed themselves most plainly to be but ill-painted wood, appear almost like the marble portico of an Ionic temple.

The air was so still that from the stables, almost a quarter of a mile away, they could hear the sound of one of the horses kicking in its stall, and the tune that a groom was rather unskilfully deducing from a concertina.

Crane whistled the air softly as he strolled along by his companion's side, until she stopped and said with great intensity:

"I want to say something to you, Burton. I'm not happy. I'm horribly distressed. I ought not to say what I'm going to say, at least the general idea seems to be that girls shouldn't—but I have a feeling that you're really my friend, a friend to whom I can speak frankly even about things that concern me."

"You make no mistake there, Cora," he returned.

He was what is considered a brave man, with calm nerves and quick judgment; physical danger had a certain stimulating effect upon him; morally, too, he did not lack courage; though good-naturedly inclined to have everything as pleasant as possible, he was not in the least afraid to make himself disagreeable. But now, at the thought of what Miss Falkener was going to say to him, he was frankly and unmistakably terrified. Why, he asked himself? Young and timid girls could go through such scenes and, it was said, actually enjoy them. Why should he be unreasoningly terrified—terrified with the same instinctive desire to run away that some people feel when they see snakes or spiders? Why should he feel as if prison walls were closing about him?

"Two years ago, when you and I first began to see each other," Miss Falkener went on, in a voice that she kept dropping lower and lower in order to conceal its tremors, "I liked you at once, Burton. I liked you very much. But, aside from that—you know, I'm not always very happy with my mother, aside from liking you, I made up my mind in the most cold-blooded, mercenary way, that the best thing I could do was to marry you."

"Well, I call that a thoroughly kind thought," said Crane, smiling at her, as a martyr might make a little joke about the lions.

"It wasn't kind," said Cora. "It was just selfish. I supposed I would be able to make you happy, but really, I thought very little about you in the matter. I was thinking only of myself. But I've been well repaid for it—" She stopped, almost with a sob; and while she was silently struggling for sufficient self-control to continue, Crane became aware that the front door had opened, letting a sudden shaft of yellow light fall upon them through the green moonshine, and that Tucker had come out on the piazza. He was looking about; he was looking for them. Not a sound did Burton make, but if concentration of thought has any unseen power, he drew Tucker's gaze to them.

"Burton," said Tucker.

There was no answer.

"Burton!" he called again.

Miss Falkener raised her head.

"Some one called you," she said.

Then Crane's figure became less rigid, and he moved a step forward. He was saved for the time, at least.

"Want me, Tuck?" he said.

Solon came down the steps carefully. He had reached an age when the eye does not quickly adjust itself to changes of light.

"Yes," he said, "I do want to see you. I want to ask you one question. Did you or did you not assure me the boy Brindlebury had left the house?"

"I did so assure you," answered Crane, "and I had been so foolish as to hope we had heard the last of him. Smithfield told me before dinner that he left early in the afternoon."

"Smithfield lied to you. The boy is in bed in his own room at this moment."

"How do you know?"

"Go and see for yourself."

Crane was just angry enough at every one to welcome any action. Only a few seconds elapsed before he was in the servants' wing of the house. All the doors were standing open, disclosing black darkness, except one which was closed, and under this a bright streak was visible.

Crane flung himself upon this, thinking it would be locked, but evidently Brindlebury had not thought any such precaution necessary. The door at once yielded, and Crane entered.

Brindlebury, fully dressed, was lying flat on his back on the bed, with his legs crossed in the air; a cigarette was in his mouth (one of Burton's cigarettes), a reading-lamp was at his elbow, and he was engaged in the perusal of a new novel which Crane had received the day before, and had strangely missed ever since. On the floor near-by was a tray, empty indeed, but bearing unmistakable signs of having been well filled only recently.

Crane took the cigarette from Brindlebury's mouth, and the book from his hand.

"Now," he said, "I'll give you five minutes to get your things together and get out." There were no signs that packing had ever been contemplated; all Brindlebury's belongings were undisturbed.

The boy looked at Crane. He would like to have answered, but he could not think of anything to say, so he got up slowly and tried to smooth his hair which was very much rumpled.

"I'm not positive I have such a thing as a bag," he observed at length, but a little search revealed one in the closet. It was marked "B. Revelly."

"A token of respect from your late employer, I suppose," said Crane.

The boy did not answer. He was rather sulkily putting on his clothes. He was not a neat packer. A tooth-brush and some pipe tobacco, a wet sponge and some clean shirts, boots and pajamas were indiscriminately mixed.

The five minutes, unmarked by any conversation, had almost elapsed when light steps were heard in the hallway, and a voice exclaimed:

"Did you have a good dinner, honey?" and Jane-Ellen came spinning into the room, all the demureness gone from her manner.

At the sight of her employer, she stopped, and her hand went up to her mouth with a gesture expressive of the utmost horror. Brindlebury did not stop packing. He was now filling in the corners with shaving soap and socks.

His sister turned to Crane.

"Oh, sir," she wailed, "we've acted very wrongly."

"Jane-Ellen," replied Crane, "that really doesn't go. It was a good manner, and you worked it well, but it is now, if you will forgive my saying so, old stuff. I cannot look upon you as a foolishly fond sister, trying to protect an erring brother. I think it far more likely that you are the organizer of this efficient little plan to keep him here unobserved, eating my food, reading my books, and smoking, if I am not greatly mistaken, my cigarettes."

"Oh, Brin, do you take Mr. Crane's cigarettes?" said Jane-Ellen.

"Not unless I'm out of my own," said her brother.

"Without clearing his own honesty, he impugns my taste," said Crane.

It was plain that Jane-Ellen was going to make another effort to improve the situation. She was thinking hard. At last she began:

"I don't defend what we've done, sir, but if you would have let me see you alone this afternoon, I was going to ask that Brindlebury might stay just for this one night. Only I couldn't speak before Mr. Tucker, I'm so afraid of him."

"There you go again," said Burton. "You're not telling the truth. You're not in the least afraid of Tucker."

"Well, not as much as I am of you, sir."

"Jane-Ellen," said Crane, "I believe you are a very naughty girl." He was surprised to find that every trace of ill temper had left him.

"I know what you mean, sir," said the cook, and this time her voice had a certain commonplace tone. "And it's true. I haven't always been perfectly honest with you, but a servant can't be candid and open, sir; you know, yourself, it wouldn't do."

"I'd like to see it tried," returned Crane.

"Well, I'm honest now, sir," she went on, "in asking you to let Brin stay. He'll apologize, I'm sure—"

"I will not," said the boy, still packing.

But his sister hardly noticed the interruption.

"He will do what I tell him when he comes to think it over, if you will only relent. Don't you think you are just a little hard on him? He is my brother, and it would make me so happy if you would let him stay."

The desire to make others happy is not a crime, yet Crane felt nothing but shame at the obvious weakening of his own resolution under the peculiarly melting voice of Jane-Ellen. He glanced at the boy, he thought of Tucker, he looked long at Jane-Ellen. Who knows what might have happened if his eyes, which he decided he must wrench away from hers, had not suddenly fallen upon a small object lying undisguised on Brindlebury's dressing-table.

It was the pearl set...