# The Red Book Magazine/Volume 41/Number 1/What Chance Has a Man?

BOOTH TARKINGTON in the first of his new group of stories for this magazine, asks a very pertinent question, namely: “What Chance Has a Man?” Every man will understand his story, thus entitled, and every woman who reads it in the next—the May—issue will smile in her heart and drop her eyes. It's that kind of a story. You must not miss it in the May number. -announcement in the previous issue.
Deeply touched, he spoke al- most brokenly. “Muriel, I— I know I don't deserve you!”
Here they are back again—Muriel and Renfrew, the realest and most delightful young people in the whole range of contemporary American fiction. In this story Renfrew's new education begins—and how fast he will learn under instruction!
Illustrated by Arthur William Brown
What Chance Has a Man
By Booth Tarkington
YOUNG Renfrew Mears, happily engaged to be married to the lady of his long-faithful heart, came home one evening wearing an expression so thoughtful that his mother inquired about it solicitously.
“Oh, nothing,” he replied to her query. “Nothing at all, Mother. I was only wondering.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Mears, “I thought you must be. About what?”
“About colors,” he replied. “I mean about colors for the dining-room. Muriel thinks black and white would be pleasantest, but it struck me that black and white might look a little like the stationery people use after some one's died; and I thought blue would be more cheerful. But of course—" He paused.
“What decision did you and Muriel come to?” Mrs. Mears asked, though of course she knew the answer before she put the question.
“Black and white,” he said.
“You wanted blue very much, Renfrew?”
Her son's mild and rather wistful face showed forth the faint illumination of a smile so dreamily fond that a certain anxiety Mrs. Mears already felt for him grew stronger. “Of course I didn't want blue so much as Muriel wanted black and white,” he said. “And she knows better than I do, naturally.”
“About decorations, you mean?”
“About everything,” he returned, the fond smile not disappearing. It became but the fonder, in fact; and upon this his mother's anxiety so increased that she resolved to give him a little affectionate advice. She had several times been upon the point of doing this, but had succeeded in bottling the impulse. Now, however, she spoke out.
“RENFREW,” she said gravely, “I think you ought to insist upon blue.”
“Do you?” he asked, staring at her wonderingly. “Why, no. You see, Muriel had already decided on black and white before we discussed it.”
“Had she? Well, you have to live with your walls and furniture and curtains about as much as she does, don't you? Didn't she realize that?”
“Oh, yes. She was perfectly willing to hear all I had to say for blue. She was absolutely open-minded about it.”
“But your dining-room's going to be black and white,” his mother said, “unless you insist so firmly on blue that you'll get it.”
“Oh, but I think it's settled,' he returned nervously. “We really settled on black and white before I came away.”
“'We' did?”
“Yes, we decided—"
“Wait, dear,' Mrs. Mears interrupted, checking him gently. “There's something I'd like to say to you, Renfrew. I believe I ought to.”
“Yes, Mother?”
“I want you to understand that I'm going to keep out of your and Muriel's affairs,” she began. “I'm very, very anxious for Muriel never to get any idea of me as an intrusive mother-in-law; but I do feel that I ought to tell you something—confidentially—and you must be sure never to let her know I said it. I've seen a great many young couples begin their matrimonial adjustments, Renfrew. I had my own experience, of course, and I've had a great many other such experiences by proxy, and by observation, so to speak. My mother was the best woman I ever knew, but the truth is, your poor grandfather never had his way about a single thing in his whole life—at least, not one that I ever heard of! Sometimes she made him think he did, but he didn't.”
Renfrew laughed. “And how about Father?” he asked.
“Oh, your father!” Mrs. Mears exclaimed lightly, and laughed too. “What I'm leading up to is my regret that you don't seem to have inherited a little of his obstinacy! The truth is, I think you and Muriel will both be happier if you begin by showing more firmness with her.”
Upon so radical a suggestion, Renfrew's laughter was instantly dispelled by a troubled gravity. “Happier? Both of us? Muriel too? Do you think so?”
“I know it,” she assured him earnestly. “It's the beginning that counts so much more than young people guess; but the poor things don't find that out until years and years afterward! Good gracious,” she cried, “if young couples realized how tremendously the beginning counts afterward, I doubt if any of 'em would have the courage to begin!”
“But don't you think Muriel and I are beginning happily, Mother?”
“Yes,” she said. “Nearly all the beginnings are happy—so far as that goes. All the divorced people I know had delightful engagements and were 'just blissful' throughout the honeymoon— and yet when the trouble came, one could see that something had been wrong from the beginning.”
But at this, Renfrew's expression made plain his sense of a profanation. “You don't look upon Muriel and me in that light, do you, Mother? It doesn't seem to me just fair to speak of us in the same breath with people who get divorces!”
“Now, now!” she begged him. “I suppose it was going to extremes, but that's because I'm so anxious to get you to see how terribly important it is for you to begin your life with Muriel in just the right way. You don't dream how important it is!”
“Don't 1?” And he laughed again, light-heartedly; upon which she became all the more anxious.
“Ah, don't laugh!” she said. “It's only youth that can laugh like that—because it doesn't know! Young people in love are like children on the way to a party: they can't possibly imagine that everything wont be just glorious; and yet what terribly bad times some children do have at parties!”
“What a lecture!” he exclaimed gayly.
But she shook her head. “What I want to get you to see is that young love really is blind, and doesn't know it; and so it doesn't take amy precautions.”
“But good heavens!” he cried. “You don't mean I ought to take precautions with Muriel!”
“I only mean that you ought to be careful about not giving way to her in everything at the start. If you do, you'll keep on, for the simple reason that when two people fall into that habit—one always having her way and the other yielding—it may take a serious quarrel to break such a habit, and the fear of that kind of a quarrel is likely to make the yielding one keep on yielding forever. It isn't good for either of 'em. It's bad for the one person: to be allowed to become too selfish—and it's mighty uncomfortable for the other to be too unselfish all your life!”
“Mother!” the young man exclaimed. “Why, what makes you think—”
“Nothing,” she interrupted. “But you ought to realize a little of what a wise man said of marriage: that it isn't a bed of roses but a field of battle. And he was a happily married man, at that!”
“Doesn't sound like it!”
She put her hand on his arm. “Renfrew,” she said gently, “I want you to promise me two things.”
“What are they?”
“First, that you'll never let Muriel think I'm interfering your affairs—for one reason because I wouldn't interfere; I'm only trying to hint what's wisest for you both.”
“Of course,” he said. “What's the other promise you want?'”
“That you will have blue in your dining-room!”
“Oh, but that's settled. We agreed on black and white, and I couldn't—”
“Well, then, promise me that the next time you want something and she wants something different, you'll be firm with her and have your way. Will you, Renfrew?”
“But I don't want anything different from what she wants,” he said. “I like blue, but I'd much rather have black and white since she wants it.”
“Well—” Mrs. Mears paused with a suggestion of helplessness. “Well, I've tried just to put a thought into your mind: I can't do any more, but it might be better for both of you if you think of it a little. Will you promise me that' much—just to think of it?”
“Oh, I will,” he returned heartily. “I understand what you mean, and of course I'll think about it. Don't worry!”
SHE laughed, regarded him for a moment with a pitying fondness, and bidding him good night, went out of his room, where this conversation had taken place. Then as soon as she had gone, he did a sentimental thing: he went to a window, lifted the shade, and looked long and dotingly across the street at the house where dwelt the promised bride. The windows of the library downstairs, where he and his Muriel had recently agreed upon black and white, were still lighted with the warm glow that came from the tall lamp with the tan and gold lampshade; and by a coincidence, Muriel was at this moment seated in that mellowed illumination and engaged with her mother in a conversation upon the proper beginnings for young couples about to be married. It was unfortunate that Renfrew couldn't hear it.
“I'm sorry, Muriel,” Mrs. Elliot was saying reflectively. “I'm really very sorry you didn't end by telling Renfrew you thought blue would be prettier for your dining-room. It's so dreadfully important for young people to start just right and not have any disagreement they might remember afterward.”
“But we didn't disagree,” Muriel said quickly. “We agreed on black and white.”
“Yes, I know; and I think your ideas on decoration are better than Renfrew's. At least, they're more definite.”
“Well, yes!” the daughter agreed. “He just says 'blue' in a general way, and he really doesn't know, himself, whether he wants it all blue, or just the hangings blue and the walls white, or both blue, or what!”
“I understand. Still, I think it might have been better to let him have his way.”
“You do?”
“I mean,” Mrs. Elliot explained, “I mean, it might have been better if you'd said yes, you thought blue would be prettier, yourself, since he did; and then you could have your black table and sideboard and chairs, just the same, and your black-and-white window draperies, but you could get a piece of bluish embroidery you could have on the table sometimes; and you could even get a pair of blue Bristol glass candlesticks for the mantelpiece. I mean just at first. Of course you could take 'em down and put up something else after a little while, if you didn't like "em: he'd never even notice they were gone after the first week or so, probably.”
|max-width=450px|style=text-align:center|
Illustration: “I declare!” Muriel exclaimed. “Is that how you've made such a contented old party of Papa, all these years?”
Muriel's noticeably handsome and straightforward young eyes widened in the stare of strongly awakened interest with which she favored her mother. “I declare!” she exclaimed. “Is that how you've made such a contented old party of Papa, all these years?”
Mrs. Elliot laughed, but had conscience enough to blush faintly. “Your father's different,” she said. “He's good, but he's a peculiarly obstinate man.”
“You mean he's obstinate about things until you find some means to make him think he's having his way, Mamma?”
Upon this Mrs. Elliot's laughter and color both became a little more pronounced. “A wife's home task is to keep her husband well and happy, isn't it?” she inquired gayly. “Contentment is happiness, they say. Well, a man's discontented when he isn't having his way; so it follows that when he's contented, he believes he is having his way.”
“Mamma!” exclaimed Muriel. “And so what you're really telling me is—”
“Nothing!” Mrs. Elliot laughed, interrupting her daughter quickly. “Nothing at all! And you must be sure not to let Renfrew dream I've even spoken of your dining-room at all. Interfering mothers-in-law have done enough harm in this world, and I'm not one of that kind. I don't even want to put a thought into your head—except perhaps—”
“'Except perhaps' what?” the daughter inquired, for Mrs. Elliot seemed merely to have set the two words adrift haphazard on the air.
“Except perhaps—nothing at all!” the merry lady said, rising. “I told you I don't want to be putting thoughts into your head!” And taking with her a book, she went to bed, to “read herself asleep,” leaving behind her a wakeful daughter with indeed some thoughts in her head. In fact, Muriel's thoughts kept her awake until after midnight—and just across the street her chosen young man likewise remained long awake and thoughtful. Polonius' advice to his son, though of a base sort, was at least such as not to disturb his offspring; rather, it was so soothing that, repeated from the stage, it has sent many a son or daughter almost to sleep. Perhaps that is why many generations have regarded it as the very model of parental advice.
YOUNG Mr. Mears was still so thoughtful, at breakfast the next morning, that his mother had to ask him twice in what occupations he intended to spend the day. “Oh, nothing much,” he then responded, smiling vaguely. “Of course, Muriel and I are going to drive out and see how far the plasterers have got on since yesterday, and we'll probably settle some points we hadn't quite decided yet.”
“Not about the dining-room?” she asked with intentional slyness.
“No,” he laughed. “Nothing so important as that. The main thing's about which room I'll use for my shooting stuff. I really need a separate room for it, and I'm going to bring my dogs in from Jones' farm and keep 'em at home."
“You are? Have you told Muriel?”
“No; I hadn't happened to; but I know she'll want 'em as much as I do. Real dogs, I mean of course—not these miserable toy dogs. It was she that suggested I ought to have a whole room for my guns and things, but we didn't decide which room it ought to be. Probably the extra guest-room would do.”
“And where are you going to keep your two setters?”
“Oh, about the place. I like dogs in the house, myself. So does Muriel; she said so. Everything's al! right about that, Mother.”
“I hope so,” she said. “But anyhow—”
“Anyhow what?”
“Anyhow you wont forget that secret little bit of advice I gave you last night, will you, dear?”
“Now, don't you worry!” he said cheerfully. “Muriel wants me to have my way about things just as much as you do; but if we ever differ again about anything a little—why, of course a man ought to have certain things his own way. I've thought it over, and I believe perhaps there is something in what you were telling me. Probably it would be better for both of 'em if the man showed some firmness at times. But just now I can't imagine anything else that's likely to turn up for us to differ about.”
“Ever, do you mean, Renfrew?” his mother said, and her devotion to him was so great that she contrived to express nothing more than a casual and gentle inquiry. But upon his prompt reply, she was forced to look away from him lest he should see the pitying wonder that came into her eyes.
“Of course I do,” he said. “I can't imagine anything else for us ever really to differ about. The only thing was the dining-room; it was only a trifle, and we got it settled, last night.”
“But if something else does turn up—”
“Oh, yes,” he said firmly. “If it does, I'll remember what you said.”
Illustration: He went to the window and looked dotingly across the street at the house where dwelt the promised bride.
BY another coincidence, not at all strange, Muriel was at this moment concluding her own breakfast in company with her mother, and they too were planning sketchily for the future, although their conversation, as it happened, involved a little jocose recrimination on the part of Muriel. “I've wanted a Pekinese spaniel for years and years,” she informed her mother with smiling reproach, “and what's more, you jolly well know it, Mamma! I've begged for one often enough!”
“You mustn't blame me,” Mrs. Elliot said. “Of course I understood a Pekinese would have made your home life much more bearable, but you know as well as I do that your poor father doesn't like dogs, and especially little dogs. We could scarcely expect to keep a Pekinese in the house as long as he has that prejudice; and you have to keep a Pekinese in the house if you keep one anywhere. If you let it run around alone outdoors, probably some cat would eat it.”
“There's another thing I'd better learn,” Muriel said with a thoughtfulness that her mother seemed to find rather obscure.
“You'd better learn how a cat can eat a Pekinese, Muriel?”
“No,” said Muriel. “How to put everything on 'father.'” And she continued to eat raspberries and cream demurely, without looking up.
“Poor Renfrew!” her mother sighed. “Don't learn too much, Muriel! How do you think he'll take to your idea of a Pekinese? Have you told him you're going to use your new married freedom for this purpose?”
“No,” Muriel replied. “But he loves dogs. I think he's been really hinting that he wants to give me a dog, because he keeps coming back to the subject so often. For the last week or so, he's never let a chance go by to tell me that he loves dogs, I'm sure he's been leading up to something, and I think this morning will be about the proper time for me to mention that it can be a Pekinese.”
“Anything else this morning?”
“Oh, we're going out to the house, of course.”
“Not to reopen the question of the dining-room?”
“No,” said Muriel. “I have to find a place where he can keep his guns and shooting-clothes for a while.”
“'For a while,' you say, dear?”
“Well, I rather hope he'll get over all that before long,” said the daughter dreamily. “I've always thought shooting little birds and deer was really cruel—not consciously, of course, but more a perfectly natural relic of barbarism left over inside us from our ancestors. don't believe it's good for Renfrew spiritually, and hope he'll gradually get so interested in books and music he wont care to go out killing things. I really hate it; I hate guns and shooting. clothes and everything connected with hunting—but of course for a while I'm going to be tactful and not let him see that.”
THIS determination of Muriel's, to be tactful, she began to put into effect immediately; for Renfrew arrived just then to drive her out to where, on the modish fringe of the growing city, their unfinished bride-and-groom house now enlivened a little April grove with the whistlings of plasterers, the laughter of anecdotal plumbers and the songs of carpenters. She was tactful; yet as they drove along in Renfrew's neat “roadster,” she was so comely, and of such a charming color in the springtime breeze, and he so stricken with the wonder that this loveliness should miraculously stoop to him, that it seemed she need not have taken the trouble to use a bothersome thing like tact. Indeed, he told her so, in his own way.
“If there's anything in the world you want, Muriel,” he said, “I hope you'll say so. I mean if there's anything you want different. I mean about me, or about the house. For instance, if you wanted me to be a different kind of person from the way I am, all you'd need to do'd be just to say so, and I'd try. And whatever you want different about the house—you know I'm building it for you, and it ought to be your way.”
Illustration: “Good heavens!" he said. “When the ladies claim to be the vanquished, what chance has a man?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “It ought to be as much your way as mine.
“No,” he returned tenderly. “The house is the wife's. There's hardly anything the husband ought to have the say of—outside of his own room and a place for his guns and stuff, probably.”
“Don't you think it would be better if both husband and wife agreed about the whole thing, Renfrew?” she suggested. “It oughtn't to be the wife's house nor the husband's house, either. They both live in the house: they ought to be in perfect agreement about all of it.”
“Yes, that's the way I look at it,” he said, with prompt inconsistency. “I think that's the best way, myself.”
“Yes, dear.” And with that her voice just hinted a little generous abnegation as of some self-sacrifice accomplished in the cause of love and justice. “That's why I thought it over about the dining-room after you'd gone, last night. You're going to have your way, dear. We'll put blue there.”
“What!” he cried, protesting. “Why, no! We settled on black and white, and I wouldn't change it for the world!”
“Yes, you will,” she insisted gently. “Don't you suppose your slightest wish is more to me than any silly old color-scheme for a dining-room?”
At thi, his grateful marveling upon her sweetness to him was so emotional that his voice became husky. “Muriel—oh, Muriel!” he murmured.
She laughed. “Of course we'll have it blue!”
“We wont!” he cried. “Do you think I'd let you give up a thing you'd planned like that? Why, black and white's a thousand times more—”
“No,” she said. “Blue is the loveliest color there is, and that's what we'll use in our dining-room.”
“We wont! I wont let you—”
“Yes. We'll keep some black and white touches—just the curtains, for instance—to set the blue off a little; and the ivory-white walls'll help, too; but we'll have dull-blue flower-designs painted on the black furniture, and we'll put blue glass candlesticks on the mantelpiece, and a blue embroidered—”
“I wont let you!” he exclaimed vehemently. “I wont let you do such a thing just because I was so selfish I had to go and talk about blue after you'd planned to—”
“No, it's settled,” she interrupted, and she patted his arm with a cheery reassurance that brought even greater huskiness to his voice, so everwhelming was his appreciation.
“Muriel—I—I don't deserve you. You mustn't ever dream I think I do!”
“Foolish!”
SHE whispered this lover's word, leaning nearer him, and his immediate response was to reach that stage of the ineffable which permits no verbal expression and can but heave the sigh of glorified marveling. And having heard that sigh, she patted his arm again, and said gayly: “So that's settled! Now we've got to decide where'll be your gun-room. Which room do you want it to be? Because it's going to be wherever you say, you know.”
“Well, of course it oughtn't to be one of the larger rooms; but I was thinking we probably wont ever have more than one person at a time staying with us, and so I thought maybe I might take that extra—"
“Let's wait,” she said, interrupting him briskly. “Let's wait till we get there and go over the house again. It's so much easier to decide on a thing like that when you're looking at it.”
“So it is,” he agreed, fondly. “You're always so practical, Muriel. It's wonderful to me how a girl that's never had any responsibilities before, like you, can be as practical as you are.”
“Oh, no, I'm not. But I have got an idea about your gun-room, and I do hope you'll think it's a practical one.”
“I know I will. What is it?”
“Wait and see!”
He gladly assented to that, but when they reached the pretty new house in the little grove, he was slightly puzzled to be conducted to the attic. “Did you want to see about something up here first, Muriel?” he inquired mildly.
She beamed upon him, and with a gesture both graceful and gracious, seemed to display riches in the spacious expanse about them. “Just think! Here's a whole third floor!” she cried, and obviously awaited his enthusiasm.
“WHAT for?” he asked.
“'What for!'” she echoed. “Why, for anything we want to do with it!”
“With the attic? Why, what would we want to do with it except to put things up here that get worn out or that we don't want to look at?”
“Oh, that's the old-fashioned way of treating a third floor, Renfrew. You're thinking of your grandmother's garret.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. People don't do that nowadays. You see, this isn't a garret,” she informed him brightly.
“Isn't it?” the mystified young man inquired.
“No! It's a third floor!”
“But what—”
“Foolish!” And as he again was thrilled by the tender word, she built his happiness higher by a light touch of her fingers upon his cheek. “Don't you see what my idea is, Renfrew?”
“Well, not yet. I'm stupid. I—”
“Stupid, no! It's because you'd never have thought of such a thing for yourself. You'd have been afraid it was wanting more than your share; but it isn't. A man's share of the house ought to be bigger: he needs more room.”
“But I don't see—”
“Listen, dear,” she said. 'Below the third floor it's all yours and mine together; each has it all just as much as the other does; but from the bottom of the third floor stairs up, it's all just yours—your private and special domain. So this is your gun-room or anything else you want it to be. Some day, if you like. you could put wall-board around; and we can stick hooks and things just anywhere in a big place like this, and you can hang your shooting things on 'em. Don't you like my idea, Renfrew?”
As she asked this question, with lovely eyes uplifted to his, she did what was appropriate to such an appeal, and lifted her arms too; whereupon the fond Renfrew was not loath to shield her from attic drafts. He was so deeply touched he spoke almost brokenly.
“Muriel! I—I know I don't deserve you! What other girl in the world would say what you just said to me? That all the rest of the house was ours together—none of it just yours alone— but this is to be just mine!”
“Foolish!” She laughed, patted his cheek again, and moved toward the stairway to descend. “So that's settled!” she said. “Now let's go down to where it's 'ours together.'”
RENFREW followed, overcome by the sense of his unworthiness, and he was still muttering something about it when they reached the hall on the ground floor. They found it vacant, for the workmen had gone out to lunch in the grove, and Muriel seated herself upon a bench. “No; you're wrong, dearest,” she said. “I'm not nearly good enough for you; but let's talk about more practical things. I've been thinking lately—” She paused, musing.
“Yes, Muriel? About what, dear?”
“You've so often spoken of your great fondness, for dogs.”
“How strange! I was. just this second going to mention dogs myself!”
“We do have exactly the same thoughts so often!” she exclaimed. “Isn't it strange?”
“It's—it's wonderful, Muriel! It makes it seem as if all this was—was intended.”
“Yes, it does. But what I was thinking,” Muriel went on, “it's so nice that we're both fond of dogs. I don't mean all dogs, of course. There are lots of kinds of dogs we wouldn't care for.”
“Indeed there are,” he heartily agreed. “Some kinds of dogs I can't understand how people can even bear to look at 'em! But you take real dogs—dogs that have sense and gumption to 'em, and know how to do useful things—well, there isn't anything that's nicer to have right in the house with you. At least, that's the way I look at it, I mean.”
“So do I,” she said at once. “I'm so glad you feel that way about dogs, Renfrew.”
“Indeed I do! At home, of course, I couldn't have my dogs with me; Mother's always been afraid they'd muddy the house all up on rainy days; and besides, that far downtown, of course, it hardly seemed fair to the dogs themselves—no place to run without taking the chance of getting killed by automobiles. But I've always said if I ever had a house of my own—”
“So have I,” Muriel interrupted amiably. “I've never been able to keep a dog at home, either, Renfrew. Mamma doesn't like 'em and persuaded Papa into thinking he didn't; so he wouldn't let me; but I've always thought that if I married a man that wanted a dog, he should have one. I want you to have one, Renfrew.”
“You—you dear!” said Renfrew. “I know you'll get mighty fond of 'em, when I—”
“You've never had your way about it at home, but you shall have your way in your own house,” she assured him. “I don't mean to criticize your mother, of course; and probably she was right in one way, because those two big rough Irish setters you keep out at that farm would have interfered with your own comfort, and she must have thought of that as well as of keeping the house presentable. But I do think she might have let you keep a nice dog!”
Renfrew looked a little confused. “A nice one—” he murmured.
“Yes. I mean the kind you want and ought to have and are going to have, dearest. A dog's meant to be a man's little companion—a gentle little friend to meet him at the door when h comes home. A dog's meant to amuse his master and make hin laugh. Oh, Renfrew, think of a wonderful, fluffy, tiny thing rolling on his little back on a cushion, or fighting with a ball of yarn on the floor!”
But here the confused Renfrew failed to follow her, so to speak. That is, his confusion had only deepened. “You mean a—a—He paused, then began again, apologetically: “You don't mean a—a kitten, Muriel?”
“No,” Muriel answered, laughing at him sweetly. “You dear, queer thing! I hate cats. How in the world did you get such an idea?”
“You said—”
“I said a dog! A lovely clean woolly tiny clown of a dog that will just wear his warm little heart in his eyes every time he looks at his master—the way I do, Renfrew!” And rising, she stepped closer and looked at him indeed in a way to concentrate his interest. “Wouldn't you like to have two of us—a tiny dog a me—to look at our master like this, dear?”
Renfrew, instantly and transcendently radiant, was too overwhelmed by the miracle of that look to reply in words. But fortunately the workmen were all out in the yard, and preoccupied with food.
TOWARD dinner-time, that coolish evening, Renfrew's father sat by a small fire in his library, and nodded as his wife finished reading to him a passage of Emerson's. “Thanks,” said. “I always like that. Where's Renfrew? Isn't he coming home for dinner?”
“I suppose so. He didn't lunch at home.”
“Somewhere with her, I suppose.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Mears said. “I haven't seen him since this morning. They went to look at the house, of course. They had one or two matters to settle, he said.”
“They had?”
“Yes,” his wife informed him, with a faint smile. “They settled about the dining-room last night. Renfrew wanted it blue and she wanted it black and white.”
“I see,” Mr. Mears returned. “So they settled on black and white.”
“How did you guess that?” she laughed.
“From experience,” her husband replied, giving her a brief glance from the corner of his eye.
“What! Why, our dining-room—”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “I meant general experience—not experience about dining-rooms in particular. What were she and Renfrew going to settle today?”
“First about a room for his shooting things. He wants to use a guest-room for that.”
“I shouldn't think she'd like it.”
“Why shouldn't you think so?” Mrs. Mears inquired a little sharply.
“From experience,” he said again, placidly.
“What! Why, you never—”
“No,” he returned. “I didn't happen to like hunting: I was just speaking from general experience once more, What else were they going to 'settle?'”
“He wants to keep his two Irish setters in the house.”
“He does?” Mr. Mears laughed briefly. “In their new house, with everything in it dainty and fresh?”
“Yes, and he was going to be firm about it, and about the gun-room too, in case there should be any difference of opinion.”
“Oh, he was?”
“He said so. The only kind of dogs he likes are big, muddy dogs—you know how he detests lapdogs and toy dogs—and he's sure he's going to have his setters in the house.”
Mr. Mears shook his head wonderingly, and then appeared to muse, his eyes twinkling soberly in the firelight. “A remarkable girl, Muriel. Very unusual.”
“Oh, I don't know,” said his wife. “About the dining-room?”
“Oh, yes; she was usual about that!” he assented. “But if she gives up to him in such things as guest-rooms for guns, and two Irish setters in an old-rose drawing-room—”
“Hush!” Mrs. Mears warned him softly, for she had caught the sound of the front door opening and closing; there was a lively step in the hall; and then Renfrew came swinging into the room, rosy with happiness and with driving briskly in the breeze.
“Hello!” he said, as he heartily kissed his mother. “Dinner ready? I'll be down in a jiffy!”
“Wait,” Mrs. Mears said, detaining him with a touch upon his sleeve as he would have returned to the hall. “How was everything going on out at the new house?"
“Just splendidly! Everything was just bustling along like glory! We're crazy about it!”
“The dining-room too?” his father asked with some dryness.
“It's going to be blue,” the smiling Renfrew informed him.
“What!” Mrs Mears cried. “Why, what do you mean?”
“Muriel was bound to have it my way and not hers,” he said. “That's the kind of girl she is!”
“You don't mean to say—”
“Yes, I do,” the happy young man insisted. “That's just what she's done. It's going to be a blue dining-room.”
“Blue walls?”
“No, of course not!” he laughed. “Who ever heard of blue walls? The wall will be ivory-white and the curtains black and white, but the keynote of the room is blue.”
“Oh!” And Mrs. Mears, after exchanging a glance with her husband, inquired: “Where's the keynote going to be?”
“Why, there'll be little dark-blue floral figures on the furniture, and a pair of blue glass candlesticks, and a blue embroidered strip for the table, and I don't know what all!”
“Oh, I see!” said Mrs. Mears. “Did you settle about your gun-room?”
“Did we!” he echoed enthusiastically. “She's arranged for me to take absolutely the whole third floor, if I need it.”
“You mean the att—
“The whole third floor, Mother! We own all the downstairs together, but above that she wants it to be all mine!”
Mrs. Mears looked at him thoughtfully without speaking; whereupon Mr. Mears coughed rather briskly and addressed his son. “What I'm anxious to hear about, Renfrew, is the dogs. I understand you expect to keep—”
But his son cut the question off short, not evasively; Renfrew was unable to restrain longer a risible enthusiasm; and he laughed with delight as he interrupted: “Expect to keep a dog! I should say we do! You ought to see that dog!”
“But I understood there were: two,” Mr. Mears said mildly. “I thought those two hunting dogs of yours—”
“No, no!” Renfrew interrupted again. “Dogs like that belong on a farm. This dog I'm talking about is the kind that keeps you laughing. We went downtown and picked it out of a dozen. That's where I've just come from. You ought to see her with it!” And chuckling loudly, he turned to the door, but was once more detained, this time for only moment.
“Renfrew?” his mother said, in a voice that to an acute ear might have indicated a suppression of emotion.
“Yes, Mother?” He paused at the door.
“What kind of a dog is it?”
“A Pekinese,” he said. “A perfect magnificent Pekinese!” And he went chuckling down the hall, to be heard singing a moment later as he ascended stairs in a short series of bounds.
“And only this morning, I warned him,” Mrs. Mears said then, as she sat with her husband in the firelight.
“You warned him against what? Pekinese spaniels?”
“No. I warned him that marriage was not a bed of roses, but a field of battle.”
“Ah, yes,” Mr. Mears said reflectively. “You certainly could tell him that, Mamma! It's funny, though.”
“What is?”
“That it should be the conquerors who are always warning people,” he explained.
“Nonsense!” she returned, and gave him a look of scorn for his wit. Then after a silence, she sighed a little, smiled and said: “Well, I suppose the true art of battle and the true art of marriage is the same thing: it's to make the vanquished so happy that they think they're the conquerors!”
Her husband turned his graying head to stare at her. “And may I inquire which party to the conflict you would define as the vanquished?”
“'Which party?'” she cried incredulously,- but did not look at him. “Why, we are!”
“Good heavens!” he said, and returned his eyes to gaze despairingly at the fire. “When the ladies claim to be the vanquished, what chance has a man? Poor old Renfrew!” .
   Another of Booth Tarkington's delightful stories about Muriel and Renfrew will appear in an early issue. Watch for it
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1946, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 77 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse