Our vacation plans last year were of the simplest. Personally, I said to Emmeline, there was just one thing I longed for—to get away to some quiet place where I could lie on my back under the trees and look up at the clouds. To this Emmeline replied that in this posture (1) I always smoke too much; (2) I catch cold and begin to sneeze; (3) I don't look at the clouds at all, but tire my eyes by studying the baseball page in the full glare of the sun. The newspaper habit is one which I regularly forswear every summer on leaving town. I hold to my resolution to this extent that I refrain from going down to the post office in the morning to buy a paper. But toward eleven o'clock the strain becomes unendurable and I borrow a copy of yesterday's paper after peering wistfully over other people's shoulders. Emmeline thinks this habit all the more inexcusable because, working for a newspaper myself, I ought to know there is never anything in them. She can't imagine what drives me on. I told her, perhaps it is the unconscious hope that some day I shall find in the paper something worth while.
Actually, one soon discovers that the simple act of lying on one's back on the grass and looking up at the clouds involves an extraordinary amount of preparation. I am inclined to think that there must be correspondence courses which teach in ten lessons how to lie on one's back properly and look up. There must be text-books on how to tell the cumuli from the cirrus. There must be useful hints on how to relax and lose yourself in the immensity of the blue void.
The personal equipment one needs to gaze at the clouds, if you believe the department stores, is tremendous. English flannels; French shirtings; native khaki; silks; home-spuns; belts with a monogram buckle; flowered cravats in colours to blend with the foliage; safety razors; extra blades for the razors; strops to sharpen the blades; unguents to keep the strops flexible; nickeled cases to keep the unguents in; and metal polish for the nickeled cases. Arduous labour is involved in going to Maple View Farm from the comparatively simple civilisation of New York. I am not certain whether in the best circles one can properly lie on one's back and look at the clouds without a humidor and a thermos bottle.
Emmeline said I must be sure and not forget my fishing-pole, as that trout in the brook behind the barn would probably be expecting me.
It seems absurd for a full-grown man to speak of hating a trout. But why deny it? When I think of the utterly debased creature in the pool behind the barn, the accumulated results of ten thousand years of civilisation drop from me, and my heart is surcharged with venom. It all came about so gradually. My landlord asked me one morning whether I shouldn't like to try my luck with his rod. I said I should. I took his rod and hooked the blackberry bush on the other side of the stream. I did better on my next try. As my hook sank below the surface, a thrill ran along the line, the slender bamboo stem arched forward, and I waited with my heart in my mouth for an enormous trout to emerge and engage me in a life-and-death struggle. But through three long weeks he refused to emerge. Emmeline said it was the bottom of the soap-box whose upper edge is visible above the surface. But that cannot be. No inanimate object could elicit in any one the rage and the sense of frustrated desire—perhaps I had better say no more. All my better instincts corrode with the thought of that fish. It would have been compensation, at least, if I had ever caught any other fish in that brook. It might have been a near relation, a favourite son perhaps, and I should have had my revenge—but there I go again.
What Emmeline wanted was a chance to catch up in her reading. It had been a hard winter and spring, with the doctor too frequently in the house and books quite out of the question. There were a half-dozen novels Emmeline had in mind, not to mention Mr. Bryce's book on South America, John Masefield, and Strindberg, whom she cordially detests. I do too. I warned her against drawing up too ambitious a list, but she was determined to make a summer of it. She said she felt illiterate and terribly old. All I could do was to mention a few bookshops where she could get the best choice with the least expenditure of energy. Nevertheless she came back from her first day's shopping with a headache.
Éponge is a rough, Turkish-towel fabric, selling in many widths, and eminently desirable for out-of-door wear because of its peculiar adaptability to the slim styles which prevent walking. Éponge has this fatal defect, however, that when it is advertised in ready-made gowns at an astounding reduction from $39.50, all the desirable models sell out some time before ten o'clock in the morning. Hence Emmeline's headache. She took very little supper and expressed the belief that our vacation would be a complete failure. The mountains are always hot and dusty and the crowd is a very mixed one.
After a while Emmeline had a cup of tea and felt better. We went over our list of books for the summer and she wondered whether it wouldn't pay to get a seamstress into the house and avoid the exhausting trips downtown. On second thoughts she decided not to. Next morning she was quite well and asked me to remind her not to forget Robert Herrick's new novel. She said she might drop in at the office for lunch if she got through early at the stores, and we might look at books together.
Charmeuse is a shimmering, silk-like material which lends itself admirably to summer wear, because it stains easily. But in its effect on the shopper's nerves, charmeuse is even worse than Éponge. In fact, as a preparation for a summer's reading, I don't know what is more exhausting than charmeuse, unless it be crÊpe de Chine. Emmeline did not drop in for lunch that day, and when I came home at night, I found her more depressed than ever. There was nothing to be had downtown. Prices were impossible and anything else wasn't fit to be touched. It might be just as well to stay in town for the summer as go away and take the chance of getting typhoid. The situation was somewhat relieved by the arrival at this juncture of several parcels, some long and narrow, and others short and square. One particularly heavy box felt as if it might contain a set of Strindberg, but turned out to be a really handsome coat in blue chinchilla which Emmeline explained would be just the thing for cool nights in the country. She had bought it in despair at obtaining the kind of crÊpe de Chine she wanted. The crÊpe de Chine came in a smaller box.
At breakfast the next day we were tremendously cheerful. I told Emmeline of the handsome raincoat I had bought in preparation for lying on my back on the grass and looking up at the clouds. From that we passed to the new Brieux play. But when Emmeline intimated that she was going downtown soon after breakfast, I grew anxious.
"Do you think," I said, "that it will really make any difference to Mr. Galsworthy whether you read him in a voile or in a white cotton ratine?"
"If that is the way you feel about it," said Emmeline, "I can telephone and have them take all these things back. I hate them anyhow."
"What I mean is," I said, "that you don't want to wear yourself out completely before we leave the city. We have a month's reading ahead of us. Let us begin it in peace of mind."
"With nothing to wear?" she said.
Tulle is a partly transparent material, which in the hands of a skilful milliner becomes an invaluable aid to a thorough comprehension of the plays of M. Brieux, especially when studied amid the complexities of life on Maple View Farm. As usual, it is the department stores which have been first to discover this fundamental connection in life. They have everything necessary for the thorough enjoyment of Mr. Bryce's book on South America—blouses, toques, parasols, and tennis shoes. Special bargains in linen crash and batiste are offered on the same day with a cut-rate edition of "Damaged Goods." Reading Brieux in the country is almost as complicated a diversion as lying on one's back and looking up at the clouds.
