Carmella Commands/Chapter 8
r. Barrington was big and ruddy-
faced and jovial. He looked around the table and nodded cheerfully as he came in. Mrs. Barrington turned to her youthful guest and said:
“Kate, this is Mr. Barrington. Rodney, this is Kate Coletta, the girl I told you about, who is helping me so wonderfully at Hope House.” Carmella winced at this surprising statement.
Mr. Barrington shook hands cordially with Carmella, who was half-surprised that he did not know her. For an instant she forgot that, well as she knew his affairs, he had never seen her. As he took his seat beside his wife she asked, as an answer to his shout from the hall:
“The Greendale matter proving complicated?”
“No, not that. Just moving a little faster than I expected. Bus line starting next week, and I’ve already got an annexation ordinance planted, to be presented to the aldermen next Tuesday. Richmond arranged it. He’s got our holdings all fixed—all but one little quarter acre or so. Real estate that will shoot for the sky next week. Well, well, how’s everybody? Hello, Margaret, my dear! Hello, John! How’s the boy?”
His children responded dutifully, though obviously bored. Margaret, who was beginning to feel the influence of the languid pose, had more than once protested at her father’s incurable habit of talking the day’s business at table. He talked business everywhere. He could no more help it than a small boy can help jumping and shouting. It was the boy still in him. His interests were everybody’s.
Pressed for a defense of talking business to his wife at dinner, when Margaret had protested, he had insisted to himself that he did it only that Mrs. Barrington might know his affairs in case—well, in case anything happened; the kind of thing the life insurance advertisements harped on, for example.
He knew in his heart that this was not the real reason; but having thought of it, he let it obsess him until he bragged at the club that if anything happened to him his wife could take over the business on an instant’s notice. And, indeed, he would have been horrified had he known how little real attention Mrs. Barrington was paying to his business chatter. Her mind was concerned with other things. Yet she invariably maintained the appearance of interest.
In contrast to his short-bodied, dynamic vigor, his wife had true Norman figure and poise and reserve. She leaned slightly forward as she talked or questioned. He leaned back and spoke with vast implications of authority.
She answered “Yes,” or “No,” or “Indeed, really,” at appropriate intervals until he had ended his narrative. Suddenly, under the resentful glare of his daughter’s eyes, it appeared to occur to him that he had duties to his wife’s guest.
“How do you do, Miss Coletta?” he asked, turning cheerfully to Carmella and bowing slightly. “Please excuse me for talking shop at the table. Bad habit, I know.”
He laughed delightedly, like a boy, glancing at his wife and daughter as if the joke were on them. His daughter glowered. He went on:
“Mrs. Barrington has spoken of you. You’re a Hope House girl, I understand. Never been there myself, but Mrs. Barrington tells me it’s an interesting place. Tell me, please, what you do there. You’re not as interested in Greendale as Mrs. Barrington is, I’ll wager. She’s looking for a pearl necklace out of it.”
“Yes, sir!” said Carmella.
Icicles and red-hot pokers had raced up and down her back as he had told his wife of the state of affairs in Greendale. The game was bigger and more confusing than she had thought. Pearl necklaces! Of city ordinances and annexation projects she had the haziest of notions. But evidently, in some mysterious way, they were connected with such items as pearl necklaces.
“Yes, sir!” she repeated, pretending to have choked a bit as she thought. “I am interested in Greendale. My dad has some land out there. Some men tried to buy it the other day.”
“Rodney!” exclaimed Mrs. Barrington. For her husband was suddenly holding his knife and fork in his hands, both straight in the air. And he was staring at Carmella as even John had not stared.
“Su-weet Jerusalem!” he was saying.
Practically every early habit of his to which Mrs. Barrington had objected in earlier days had now come back to him, like a spell. Both of his elbows were on the table. He had reverted to an expletive she hated.
“Rodney!” she repeated. But he was oblivious.
“Who was trying to buy your father’s land?” he asked softly.
“Two men. Mr. Hastings and Mr. Richmond.”
“Su-weet Jerusalem!” said Mr. Barrington again.
Later, when he recalled his perturbation on this occasion, he wondered if he ought not to play poker oftener than every Saturday night at the Pioneer Club, to improve his emotional technique. But who in the world, he asked himself, would suspect that a dago kid picked up by his wife at a settlement house would prove to be the key figure in a real estate deal?
“Nobody!” he once shouted to himself, and then flushed.
The fact that he had grown rich in land developments stood as tangible evidence that he was a good business man. Both in the realtors’ exchange and in the Bankers’ Club he was rated as the life of the party. He knew how to entertain when there was a dollar mark at the end of the trail.
Through the rest of the luncheon Carmella felt like a queen, so wholly was his brilliance focussed on her. By finger-bowl time she was sure that he was the most wonderful man she had ever met. And so friendly! She had always supposed these rich men were cold and repellent.
Margaret and John relapsed into sullen silence as they watched their father. Dimly they realized the situation. Mrs. Barrington, who sensed it better than they, was inclined to be jubilant. Now, perhaps, her husband, previously a facile scorner, would appreciate the deep significance of Americanization work at Hope House.
After the coffee, with demi-tasse chocolate for the children, Mr. Barrington looked at the banjo clock on the wall and said to his wife:
“I’m dated for golf at two-thirty. If you can spare Miss Coletta for a few minutes, I’d like to talk real estate to her.”
Mrs. Barrington smiled. To Carmella she said:
“I really didn’t invite you to a business luncheon, Kate. I didn’t know that you and Mr. Barrington had real estate interests in common. Would you like
In the Cream-and-gold Room They Faced Each Other
to talk to him about land? Because, of course, you know you needn’t, if you don’t want to. Perhaps you’d rather wait till you talk with your father.”
But the Norman touch was not needed. Carmella was already quivering with eagerness.
“You bet I’d like to talk,” she said, with a fervor that even Mrs. Barrington, with all her perceptions, did not understand.
Mr. Barrington chuckled, as if relieved from some anxiety, and followed his wife in rising.
“Let’s go into the front room, Kate,” he said. “You can talk with Mrs. Barrington about Hope House after I’ve started for the day’s work at golf. Does your father play golf?”
“My father he works,” said Carmella severely.
“By Jove, I thought I did,” said Mr. Barrington. “Don’t talk to me as if I didn’t, please. Maybe I’ll sell a hundred-thousand-dollar property this very afternoon, Kate, at about the twelfth hole.”
“You play and work too?” asked Carmella.
“I absolutely do.”
This was such a new idea to Carmella that it needed some time for adequate digestion. She was still ruminating when, in the cream-and-gold room, they faced each other.
Mr. Barrington chose to introduce the subject:
“You were your father’s interpreter that day,” he said.
“Yes, sir!”
“And he wouldn’t sell for five thousand?”
“No, sir!”
“Why not?”
“Because I told him not to.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Barrington, drawling the word in perplexity. “Why did you tell him that?”
“Because I’ve got as much right to that pearl necklace as your wife has, if you want to know.”
“Su-weet Jerusalem!” Mr. Barrington’s subconscious self was talking now. By sheer atomic strength he forced himself back to conscious thought.
“And what will he sell for now?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Carmella, her knees quivering. “He said seven thousand then. But he didn’t know about the bus line and the annexation.”
“Damn the kid!” exclaimed Mr. Barrington under his breath.
“Don’t they make it worth more, Mr. Barrington?”
“Yes, Kate, they do.”
(“I’ll be a sport with this kid if I lose ten thousand,” said the realtor to himself.)
“Well, Mr. Barrington, I heard Mr. Richmond tell Mr. Hastings that you’d pay twice what it was worth to get dad’s land,” said Carmella.
“Oh, did you?” (Trouble loomed for Mr. Richmond in the near future.) He went on:
“And what do you think the land is worth, Kate?”
“Dad was going to hold it for four thousand, and twice that is eight thousand,” said Carmella.
“Well, but—dammit, kid!—Mr. Hastings offered you fifty-one hundred, he tells me—that’s more than your father asked⸺”
Carmella hesitated, gazing at the realtor in sorry misery. Her lips quivered as she answered:
“M-Mr. B-Barrington,” she half sobbed. “I’ve got something to tell you. I d-d-didn’t interpret right to dad. I heard Mr. Hastings say—or Mr. Richmond—what he said to the other man. D-Dad would have sold for four thousand. I t-translated wrong. I kept s-saying that Mr. Hastings wouldn’t give but only three thousand five hundred. And I kept telling Mr. Hastings that dad wouldn’t sell for less than seven thousand. I—I—l-lied, Mr. Barrington.”
Suddenly Carmella burst into tears, a situation with which Mr. Barrington had had small experience. His wife’s Norman blood did not burst into tears, whatever the provocation. Carmella wept quietly for a moment, and then burst into language again.
“I ch-cheated, Mr. B-Barrington. I ch-cheated. I didn’t want dad to work so hard and then somebody else make all the money. Dad would kill me if he knew it. Don’t ever let him know it, please, Mr. Barrington.”
Mr. Barrington, all at once, felt like a knight errant. In business matters he was known by his associates and competitors to be as sympathetic as a railroad crossing. But in some odd way this seemed different from ordinary business. Carmella was, for one thing, his wife’s guest. And the story she had just told—hell, what a kid!
“Listen, Kate,” he said. “I size it that you run the works. So listen to me. I want your dad’s land because there may be a profit in it for me. But if plans don’t go through, there’ll be a loss. Now listen, kid! I can stand a loss and your father can’t.
“I think the plans will go through. This business is a gamble, and I can afford to do it. But if they don’t⸺”
Mr. Barrington shrugged his shoulders.
“Your dad’s figure of four thousand dollars was a speculative one,” he continued. “If my plan works, he can get it, and a lot more. If it doesn’t work, he loses. Now I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give him, cash down, Monday noon in City Hall, eight thousand dollars for his land. Is it a bargain?”
“I’ll ask him,” said Carmella.
“He’ll do what you tell him.”
“I think he will sell for eight thousand,” said Carmella.
“I’ll send Dixon or a taxi for you at eleven-thirty, Monday. Tell your dad to bring his papers. I’m off for golf. Good-bye, Kate, and I’m very glad Mrs. Barrington met you.”
The realtor held out his hand, shook Carmella’s heartily, and was gone.
The child stood dazed. Mrs. Barrington entered shortly and chatted with her. But afterwards all that Carmella could remember of this later conversation was that her hostess had asked silly questions about sewing and lace-making, and that Dixon took her home. She could not remember speaking to Dixon, all the way.
To her father that evening she recounted the interview, without mentioning bus lines or annexations.
“Eight thousand, did he say?” asked Tommaso.
“Eight thousand,” repeated Carmella.
Tommaso thought a few moments before answering. Then he said:
“Tell him he is a fool, but I take it.”
“At eleven-thirty, Monday?” asked Carmella.
“I can arrange it then.”
Carmella danced her happy way to bed that night. The anxiety that had clouded her way through recent days was changed to an almost overwhelming reaction of joy.
Before she went to bed she knelt. Her prayer consisted of a promise to God to confess to Father Carbone how she had cheated her father Tommaso into four thousand dollars more than he had expected.
To confess to Tommaso himself was beyond the realm of imagined possibility.
And that night she dreamed of pearl necklaces.