He wouldn’t look at her. He still stared at the arm sprawled on the mantel and smiled like a child. Olive wanted to hurt him suddenly, to rouse him. The glowing stare was too childish. She drawled, “I went into your bedroom to see that they’d swept it decently. Are those the family portraits on the desk? Who’s the fat girl with the baby?”
“Sadie. My sister. She’s puttin’ on weight. Papa keeps two hired girls now and she don’t have to cook. The yellow-headed fellow’s her husband—Eddie Bernamer. Awful fine man.”
He beamed at Olive now, doting on Eddie Bernamer’s perfections. Olive tried, “And the lad with the very huge pearl in his scarf is your brother? And they all live on your father’s farm? And you go down there and bore yourself to death over weekends?”
“Don’t bore myself at all. I get all the New York I want weekdays. Fine to get out and ride a horse round. Nice house. We built a wing on when Joe got married last year.”
The parlour-maid announced dinner. Mark gave Olive his arm and wanted to stroke her arm white across the black of his sleeve. He talked of his family through the meal and after it, leaning on the piano while Olive played. He tortured her with anecdotes of his and Joe’s infancy and with the deeds of Gurdy Bernamer. He sighed, reporting that Sadie’s oldest girl had died.
“You mean you’re wearing mourning for a six year old child!”
“Of course,” said Mark.
“And then you ask me what a sentimentalist is!” Olive struck a discord into the Good Friday Spell and sneered, “I dare say you think life’s so full of unpleasantness that it shouldn’t be brought into the theatre!”
“No. I don’t think that, exactly. But I don’t think there’s any sense in doin’ a play where you can’t—can’t—well, make it good lookin’. These plays where there’s nothin’ but a perfec’ly ordinary family havin’ a fight and all that—A show ought to be something more.—You get the music in an opera. Carmen’d be a fine hunk of bosh if you didn’t have the music and the Spanish clothes. Just a dirty yarn!... There’d ought to be somethin’ good lookin’ in a play.... Nobody believes a play but girls out of High School.... If you can’t have poetry like Shakespeare you ought to have something—something pretty—I don’t mean pretty—I mean—” Olive stopped the music. Mark descended rapidly and went on, “I don’t care about these two cent comedies, either.”
“You don’t like comedy?”