and the news editors had sauntered off to join him; others remained to watch, for the news had already got around that the oil stove was flooded and breakfast would be delayed. A good thirty, however, were gathered in the kitchen, where the cook of the day was sobbing, having burned off her bangs and eyebrows when she put a torch to the stove. She was laughing and crying at the same time, for while she prized her appearance (it was she who had brought the elaborate wardrobe), she had, so it happened, been Joe’s sponsor, together with her husband, and, recognizing her protégé’s hand in what had just befallen her, she was trying to treat the matter as lightly as possible.
“What happened, Katy?” Taub inquired with real solicitude; an accident to another moved him to identification. “Him?” he conjectured softly, darting a serpentine glance in the direction of the clearing, and nodding his head profoundly as he felt his suspicion confirmed. “Joe?” she answered vaguely. “I suppose. He was trying to get his breakfast without asking anybody anything. I ought to have warned him not to touch the stove.” Katy Norell was aware that this forgivingness sat well on her, in lieu at least of eyebrowsand hair, and she continued to repeat the explanation of just how it had happened to everyone who entered the room, until what had begun as sincere extenuation became, by asseveration, a kind of unpleasant accusal, since the latecomers would never have connected Joe with the accident if Katy had not told them exactly how he came to do it. Joe’s wife, Eva, in fact, tapping forward from the doorway on her small high heels, flung her a bitter look and absorbed herself very pointedly in a study of the stove’s mechanism, as if to suggest that the conviction rested on dubious testimony, and that this silent iron witness would tell a different story if it could. Young Preston Norell, observing this, put a cautionary finger on his wife’s bare elbow and nodded with his eyes toward Eva. Katy broke off in confusion. “Did my husband do that?” Eva demanded, facing her now directly, with a tone of impeachment. Katy blushed and hesitated. Everyone had turned toward her; there was an expectant silence in the kitchen as the colonists waited to see how this first crisis would be met. It was not a friendly atmosphere but one of suspended commitment. “Watch this!” said Taub’s eyes prophetically to Susan; at the door, someone hushed a member who demanded to know what was happening. The interest, for the spectators, centered on Katy’s character. With anyone else, it would have been a simple matter to say No or Yes and make an end of it, but the struggle she was having to pronounce a ready disclaimer was visible even through the soot on her expressive features. She did not dare to say Yes,though this was what nature urged on her, and she feared that a strong No would imply a previous lie. “It was only an accident,” she said finally, in a feeble and unveracious voice. “Somebody was careless and left the oil turned up without lighting the stove.”
Preston Norell’s long fingers dropped from his wife’s arm, and he pushed his way out in disgust. For those words, only and somebody , he wished her in hell; he was sick and tired of a wife who could not bear to have people believe that she had flooded a stove which in fact she had not flooded. “Who cares!” he exclaimed aloud in a veritable frenzy of boredom. Katy’s vanity he did not object to; indeed, he found it entertaining, but the irresolute repetitiousness of her character, the perpetual see-saw between intention and execution, illustrated so banally in this incident, reminded him of his mother, a well-meaning woman whom he disliked. This produced in him the disagreeable sensation of having been born married, though in fact he had celebrated his second wedding anniversary only a few days before. A nomadic and restless temperament, he had felt a deep-going antipathy
“What happened, Katy?” Taub inquired with real solicitude; an accident to another moved him to identification. “Him?” he conjectured softly, darting a serpentine glance in the direction of the clearing, and nodding his head profoundly as he felt his suspicion confirmed. “Joe?” she answered vaguely. “I suppose. He was trying to get his breakfast without asking anybody anything. I ought to have warned him not to touch the stove.” Katy Norell was aware that this forgivingness sat well on her, in lieu at least of eyebrowsand hair, and she continued to repeat the explanation of just how it had happened to everyone who entered the room, until what had begun as sincere extenuation became, by asseveration, a kind of unpleasant accusal, since the latecomers would never have connected Joe with the accident if Katy had not told them exactly how he came to do it. Joe’s wife, Eva, in fact, tapping forward from the doorway on her small high heels, flung her a bitter look and absorbed herself very pointedly in a study of the stove’s mechanism, as if to suggest that the conviction rested on dubious testimony, and that this silent iron witness would tell a different story if it could. Young Preston Norell, observing this, put a cautionary finger on his wife’s bare elbow and nodded with his eyes toward Eva. Katy broke off in confusion. “Did my husband do that?” Eva demanded, facing her now directly, with a tone of impeachment. Katy blushed and hesitated. Everyone had turned toward her; there was an expectant silence in the kitchen as the colonists waited to see how this first crisis would be met. It was not a friendly atmosphere but one of suspended commitment. “Watch this!” said Taub’s eyes prophetically to Susan; at the door, someone hushed a member who demanded to know what was happening. The interest, for the spectators, centered on Katy’s character. With anyone else, it would have been a simple matter to say No or Yes and make an end of it, but the struggle she was having to pronounce a ready disclaimer was visible even through the soot on her expressive features. She did not dare to say Yes,though this was what nature urged on her, and she feared that a strong No would imply a previous lie. “It was only an accident,” she said finally, in a feeble and unveracious voice. “Somebody was careless and left the oil turned up without lighting the stove.”
Preston Norell’s long fingers dropped from his wife’s arm, and he pushed his way out in disgust. For those words, only and somebody , he wished her in hell; he was sick and tired of a wife who could not bear to have people believe that she had flooded a stove which in fact she had not flooded. “Who cares!” he exclaimed aloud in a veritable frenzy of boredom. Katy’s vanity he did not object to; indeed, he found it entertaining, but the irresolute repetitiousness of her character, the perpetual see-saw between intention and execution, illustrated so banally in this incident, reminded him of his mother, a well-meaning woman whom he disliked. This produced in him the disagreeable sensation of having been born married, though in fact he had celebrated his second wedding anniversary only a few days before. A nomadic and restless temperament, he had felt a deep-going antipathy
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