Philip Wylie - The Other Horseman

“Sarah!” said Mr. Bailey.

“Sis is right!” Biff looked at his brother.

“You could, you know,” Sarah went on. “Ninety per cent of the gals in Muskogewan would be a pushover for you. Would be, that is, if you quit carrying the torch for the Empire. I could hear ’em panting last night, when you came into the club. I’ll arrange it for you. Some nice numbers—”

“Sarah!” said her mother, more loudly.

“Why deceive the man?” Sarah grinned wickedly. “He knows he’s sort of the Ronald Colman type—intellectually, and without the mustache—crossed with the Gary Cooper build. Honestly, Jimmie, when you got off the train I passionately wished I were pro-British—and not your sister! In a nice way,” she added, aware that her mother was reaching the point of explosion. “No fooling. Why the drudgery? You don’t look like a chemist. Last night, you didn’t even act like one.”

Jimmie said, airily, “Oh, social service. I work for some people that I want to get out of a jam.”

“Really—” said his mother.

“He means the English,” said Sarah.

“I mean,” Jimmie explained, “about a billion or so people. English, French, Poles, Czechs, Chinese, Malays, Russians—”

“We know geography,” Biff said irritatedly. “How’d you like Audrey?”

Jimmie’s face was expressionless. “She’s very attractive.”

“She didn’t—?” Sarah began.

Mrs. Bailey said, “Shh! It’s supposed to be a surprise! ”

“You better tell him then, Mother.” Mrs. Bailey considered. “Very well. Audrey didn’t say anything about the party for you tonight?”

“Not a word.”

“Well, it was going to be a surprise party—and you can pretend you’re surprised anyway—”

“ You’ll be surprised, Mother. I’m not going.” Mrs. Bailey was triumphant. “Oh, yes, you are! Audrey’s folks are giving it!”

“Oh?” Jimmie pondered. “Well, I’m still not going. ”

“But, Jimmie!” Mrs. Bailey’s voice was tearful. Mr. Bailey looked at her with an I-expected-as-much expression. “Jimmie, dear! This is really by far the most important of all the parties we’d planned for you! And you were so devoted to Audrey last night! I was extremely relieved by it.”

He felt, again, the weight of his first disappointment: the fact that his family was angry with him and the deep violence of their disagreement. It was not the shock it had been on the day before, but it still outraged him—as if he had come home to find them gleefully engaged in some lunatical act of arson or assault. “I liked Audrey all right. She has feelings—infantile and hard to reach—but there, anyhow. She reminds me of a much more real woman I knew once, too. And dancing exclusively with her saved me from hordes of those little numbers Sarah just described as pushovers. Lord! Parlor English has deteriorated!”

Mr. Bailey started to say something forceful. His wife gave him an imploring signal—a signal that promised to treat later with the situation.

Westcott came in with the papers on a tray. Mr. Bailey seized the Chicago paper vigorously, and his wife accepted the Muskogewan Times. She turned immediately to the Society page, without seeming to be aware that the Times had a front page at all.

But Mr. Bailey concentrated on the front page of the Chicago journal.

Jimmie, of course, had never watched his father read a newspaper in the latter years of the New Deal. He did so now. It was an extraordinary experience.

Mr. Bailey’s eyes ran along the banner headline with rapid interest. He said, “Huh!” in a moderate tone. He read the first few lines of double-column type. He said, “So. Two more freighters, eh?”

Sarah and Biff went on eating, scarcely noticing the one-man melodrama fomenting under their noses. But Jimmie watched, repressing a grin.

Presently his father said, “Ha!” bitterly. He pulled the paper closer to his eyes. He whispered between his teeth, “Rat!” There was a moment of absolute quiet. “The dirty rat!”

Mr. Bailey fumbled busily with the stubborn sheets as he tried to follow a news story over to page six. He finally found the continuation. He read. He exclaimed, “Communists! Communists, everyone!”

He went back to the front page. For some minutes he read quietly again. He said, “Well, they had another flood in Los Angeles. Killed three.”

This observation brought no response. His eye flicked over the type. Suddenly he made a noise. It was an animal noise. He kept reading, and he kept making animal noises.

Moans, growls, whinnies. Like the noises of something caught in a steel trap—past its first hysteria but not yet dulled to resignation. Presently he stared at nothing. “They put him in!” he whispered in a grisly tone. “They put him in again! They put him in for a third term! How could they do it?” He shook his head and bowed it, as if he were in the presence of some fantastic betrayal of himself by a dear friend.

The lowering of his head put his eye in range of still another heading. Instantly, his reverent despair was gone. He read—electrically. “Oh—God!” he whispered, as if it were one word. “They passed it! Forced it through!” He clapped his hand to his head. The newspaper fell from his other hand. Stricken, he nevertheless seized it again. He pored over the words. And a peculiar thing began to happen to him.

His face became empurpled. His body swelled like a frog’s. The great arteries in his temples beat rapidly. His breath went in and out, sharply. His fingers stiffened out, and closed, and straightened again. He looked like a boiler that is popping rivets immediately before bursting. He swore fluently, softly, using up the common expressions and repeating them in fresh combinations. With one fist he began to hammer in a steady rhythm on the edge of the table.

Only then did his wife take open cognizance of his condition. “Finish your breakfast, Kendrick,” she said pleasantly.

He stared at her glassily. Westcott brought the morning mail on a tray. Mr. Bailey continued to stare while the man distributed it. He said, “Well, Hannah, they passed it! That means there’s a ceiling on everything, now. No room for business to budge in! I’m not a banker any more! I’m just a teller! We’re Communist now—all of us! We might as well go out in the street and start saluting with fists! You wouldn’t think that one man, one solitary traitor to his class, one egomaniacal idiot, could steal from a hundred and thirty-two million people every right, every power, every privilege, every decent democratic principle—”

Suddenly he stopped. He quivered. He looked at Jimmie. “What’s the matter?”

It was some time before Jimmie could get his breath. Quite some time. He was choking—choking badly. But when he did recover he loosed the breath again in a tremendous roar of laughter. “Oh, Lord!” said. “Oh, my Lord, Dad! All these years I’ve thought of you as the most self-controlled, self-disciplined man I ever knew! And now!” He chortled again.

“It took Roosevelt to turn you into a thundering infant! No kidding!” He fought again for air. “No fooling! You’ll get apoplexy.”

His father came up standing. “Infant!” he bellowed. “Infant!”

Jimmie’s mirth was only partially quenched by his attempt to regain composure.

“You looked exactly like one. Ten months old. When you take away his rattle! Ye gods! Are many grown people going into spins like that, over the morning paper? Do it again, Dad! Do it some more!” A paroxysm of hilarity bent him double.

His father was still standing. He opened his mouth and closed it. His eyes were raging and his face was still violet. “Son—” he began.

Then Biff said, “Go on. Laugh.” His voice was so odd that even his father looked at him.