Chapter 4 second scene

Crazy Hatter family... Years ago, during an unusual period of headlines about the Hatters, an imaginative reporter gave the Hatters just such a title, based on an association.Unfortunately, that's probably going too far, since they're not half as crazy as the book's eternal Hett characters, and they're not a billionth as funny as they are.They were really—as the neighbors of the fading plaza whispered—“a nasty bunch of tough guys.”Moreover, although they are one of the oldest families in the square, they have never had a sense of community and always kept a distance from the famous Greenwich Village families.

This title has been ingrained in this way.They're always in the news, if it's not the blond Conrad who drinks too much and nearly smashes up a speakeasy; Son, the youngest of the three Hatter children, with her beautiful, eccentric, horny nose for sensual pleasures, seemed to have been rumored for a while as an opiate addict, and occasionally spent weekends in the Adirondacks. Stories of carousing and feasting, and, every other month, the tedious announcement of an "engagement" to a rich kid of so-and-so—who, remarkably, was never a kid from a decent family. They were not merely of the same mould, but all of one queer, uninhibited mould.While each is eccentric, wild, eccentric and unpredictable, none quite like their notorious mother.Emily lived even crazier than her little daughter Jill when she was a girl. After middle age, she became domineering, headstrong, and domineering. There was no social force that she could not "operate", and there was no market manipulation that was clever and ingenious to her. Too complex or too risky for our hot-blooded, gambler natures.On several occasions, rumor has it that her Wall Street business has been battered, leaving her a large fortune inherited from generations of wealthy, savvy German ancestors, melting like butter under her fiery gaze.Not even her lawyers know the correct figures for all of her estates.In this era of gossip in New York after the war, she was often referred to as "the richest woman in America"—a claim that was obviously not credible; there were also allegations that she was on the verge of bankruptcy, which was also pure hearsay.

Based on it all—her family, her personal merits, her background, and her rambunctious history—old Emily Hitt was the journalism's biggest hater and favorite at the same time.They hated her because she was an extremely difficult old hag; they loved her because, as the editor-in-chief of a major newspaper said, "Whenever there's Mrs. Hatter, there's news." Long before York Head jumped into the frigid waters of the Lower Bay, many predicted that sooner or later he would commit suicide.Flesh, they said--sincere flesh and blood like dapper York Hatter--could only take so much, and no more.For nearly forty years, this man was whipped like a dog and handled like a horse.Under his wife's sharp tongue, he has shrunk himself, lost his personality, and turned into a ghost who is hunted down all day long. He was first imprisoned in a debauched, unreasonable, mean, and crazy environment.

He'd always been "Emily Hayter's husband"—at least since their wedding in glamorous New York.That was thirty-seven years ago, when the half-lion, half-animal was the most popular pattern for decoration and chair covers were an indispensable accessory in the living room.From the first day they returned to the Washington Square house--her house, needless to say--York Head knew his fate.He was young then, and perhaps he had tried to resist her headstrongness, her fiery temper, her tyranny.Perhaps he had reminded her that she divorced her prudish first husband, Tom Kabian, for reasons unknown to outsiders; She has a very considerate behavior, and she should also restrain the inappropriate words and deeds that have shocked New York since her girlhood.Even if he tried, his fate sealed his fate and ruined a promising future for him.

York Hatter had been a chemist—albeit a young, poor, novice in science—and a researcher who had made world-shattering discoveries.When I got married, I was also experimenting with some chemical glues, which the post-Victorian chemistry world could not even dream of at the time.However, under the arrogance of his wife, the chemical glue, the miracle and the sound all disappeared.Year after year, he became more and more woebegone, until finally he found solace in the laboratory that Emily had allowed him to set up in his own room.He gradually became a hollow shell, living pitifully on his wife's wealth (and being constantly reminded of it), becoming the father of her unruly children, but his respect for these troublemakers The restraining power is worse than that of the servants at home.

Barbara was the eldest of Hatter's children and the most humane of Emily's bohemian blood.She is a thirty-six-year-old spinster, tall and slender, with light-blond hair. She is the only one in this group whose genes have not been corrupted; she loves all living things, and especially has a special liking for nature. She is even more different from the other siblings.Among the three Heite children, only she inherited her father's aptitude. At the same time, she also inevitably had some abnormal elements inherited from her mother. It was only in her that abnormality became the embellishment of genius, and was brought into play. on the poem.She has been recognized as the leading female poet of our time - the literary world unanimously dubbed her a poetic anarchist, an original bohemian ronin and an intellectual with endless poetic gifts.A writer of innumerable esoteric and brilliant verses, with sad, intelligent green eyes, she had become a priest of the Temple of Apollo in New York intellectual circles.

Barbara's younger brother, Conrad, has no such artistic talent to balance his abnormality.He's the masculine version of his mother, the quintessential Hatter lunatic.He had been on the underachiever list at three colleges, and had been kicked out three times for vicious and insane pranks.There have been two records of breaking the marriage and going to court.Once he killed a pedestrian by driving a fast car, and in the end he was exonerated only by his mother's lawyer's help and large bribes.And the countless times when his unhealthy blood boiled with alcohol and took out his Hatter temper on innocent bartenders.So far, he's had a broken nose (which has been reshaped by a plastic surgeon), a broken collarbone, and countless stitches and bruises.

But he still couldn't break through his mother's iron will.The old lady grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and plucked him out of the mess, and put him into business with a solid, dependable, and indeed admirable young man named John Gurley.But that didn't cut Conrad off from his boozy friends, and he often went back to hang out with them, relying on Gurley to keep their brokerage business in check. In one of his saner moments he met and married a hapless young woman.Of course, marriage did not correct his crazy career.His wife Martha, a frail little girl of his own age, soon understood the misfortune she was facing.Forced to live under the eaves of Heite, which was dictated by the old lady, and was bullied and neglected by her husband, her originally lively face soon developed an expression of constant fear.Like her father-in-law Jack Height, she is a lost ghost in this purgatory.

Poor Martha could hardly expect to be happy in marriage with the mercurial Conrad; her only sliver of comfort came from their two children, Jackie, thirteen, and Billy, four. . . . However, this can not help but be mixed.Jackie is a wild, headstrong, precocious teenager, a rough-and-tumble kid with a knack for inventing cruel tricks, not only for his mother, but also for his aunts and grandparents. Learn from others.Exhausted Martha, living every day is an endless struggle to clean up the mess for them. As for Jill Hatter... as Barbara puts it: "She's a social newcomer forever. She lives for her senses. Jill is the most wicked woman I've ever known—she's twice as evil, because she Never kept the promises of her beautiful lips and provocative movements.” — Jill, twenty-five — “She was an orchid without temperament, a thoroughly vile character.” She was promiscuous with men.The saying that is on the lips all day long is: "Live to live vigorously." In short, Jill is a younger version of her mother.

The average person would say that the family couldn't be more crazy just by talking about it-the cold and hard old hag as the head of the family, the withered and weak York who was forced to commit suicide, the genius Barbara, the playboy Conrad , the evil heretic Jill, the cowardly and helpless Martha and two unhappy children.But the facts don't stop there, because there is another person in this family, a person who is so unusual, so tragic, and so infinitely miserable. Compared with her, other people's strange behavior can only be regarded as normal. That is Louisa. She called herself Louisa Kabian because, although she was Emily's daughter, her father was not York Height, but Emily's first husband, Tom Kabian.She was forty, small, a little fat, and a little indifferent to the mental institution she was in.She has a clear mind, a docile personality, patience, and never complains. She is a lovely woman.However, instead of being pushed back into the background due to being surrounded by the notorious Hayt family, she became the most well-known figure in the Hayt family.Even from the moment she was born, she was used as a tool to create a scandal. Her bad reputation and various rumors and speculations have been inseparable from the beginning of her tragic and bizarre life.

It turned out that Louisa, born by Emily and Tom Kabian, was hopelessly blind and dumb as soon as she came to this world, and had initial symptoms of deafness, which the doctor said would get worse with age, Eventually it becomes completely inaudible. The doctor's cruel prediction was spot on.On her eighteenth birthday—as if a birthday gift from the dark god who ruled her destiny—Loisa Capian faced the final ordeal of total deafness. For anyone with a weak will, this misfortune is likely to be fatal.Because at the budding age, when other girls were about to discover the world of passions and desires, Luisa was trapped on a lonely planet alone - a world without sound, sight and color; , A world that cannot be expressed.Her last powerful bridge to the world, her sense of hearing, fell behind her, too, and the dark gods had no room to burn it down.There is no turning back, what she faces is denial, emptiness, and a withered life.On the level of the sensory world, she might as well be dead. Though shaky, timid, and terrified, she was not helpless, and there was something iron in her nature—perhaps a virtue inherited from her malignant mother—that made her strong. Arise, and make her face her hopeless world with equanimity beyond common courage.Even if she knew why she was so unfortunate, she never showed it; and her relationship with her perpetrator was no less than a normal mother and daughter. The cruel facts tell us that this daughter's misfortune was caused by her mother.When she was born, some people once suspected that her father, Tom Kabian, was the perpetrator of crimes. Some people said that his blood was bad, and the retribution was on the children.But when Kabian divorced the shocking Emily, and then Emily remarried and gave birth to a group of crazy Het tribes of devil trash, the world finally determined that the fault was the woman.It was only at this time that I recalled it, and this further strengthened the view that the woman was at fault. Kabian had been married once before, and the son born that time was all normal.The press quickly forgot about Kabian, who died mysteriously within a few years of divorcing Emily, whose son was nowhere to be found, and Emily, who was holding hapless York Height in a tight grip, took The fruit of her first marriage, taken into her mansion in Washington Square... After a generation of infamy, the house was destined to fall into a very painful and vicious tragedy; compared with what happened in the past All of this can only be regarded as the prelude to the lackluster drama. The bittersweet drama opened more than two months after York Height's body was pulled from the bay. At first, there were no signs of it.Mrs. Hatter's housekeeper and cook, Mrs. Abuko, used to prepare a glass of eggnog milk for Louisa Kabian every afternoon after dinner.The eggnog milk thing is pure old lady bluff. Except for her weak heart, Louisa is in good health, and she is inevitably puffy at forty, so she doesn't really lack protein.But Mrs. Hatter's will cannot be defied, and Mrs. Abuko is just a servant, so she dares not make a sound; Louisa is also docile under her mother's iron fist. Every day after lunch, she dutifully goes to the restaurant on the first floor to drink this The mother of the cup bestows nectar.The importance of this long habit will be seen in later events.Mrs. Abko, who never even dreamed of disobeying the old lady's orders, always placed the tall glass of eggnog milk in the southwest corner of the table, two inches away from the edge of the table-Louisa always seemed to be like that every afternoon. Visibly found, without hesitation raised the glass and drank it down. Tragedy, or should I say near-tragedy, happened on a mild Sunday in April, and it was business as usual... until it broke out. At 2:20 p.m.—Inspector Sam carefully checked the exact time afterwards—Mrs. Deliver beverages to the dining room in person on the customary tray, placed in the southwest corner of the table, two inches from the edge, and then, duty done—leave the dining room and return to the kitchen.She testified that the restaurant was empty when she entered and that no one came in while she was serving the eggnog milk.So far everything is clear. What happened afterward is a little harder to reconstruct, and the police testimony is not entirely accurate.There was a time of chaos where no one could objectively and calmly observe and pinpoint the exact location, words, and order.Inspector Sam could only deduce with difficulty that at about 2:30, Louisa, accompanied by the strong old lady, came out of the bedroom and went downstairs to the dining room to drink eggnog milk.They stopped in the corridor, and the poet Barbara Heit, who followed them downstairs and stopped behind them to watch, could not say afterwards why, except that she had a vague sense that something was wrong.At the same time, Conrad's cowardly little wife, Martha, also walked down the corridor from somewhere behind the house with a worried face.Martha was groaning weakly: "Where did Jackie go? He just went to the garden again to trample on the flowers and plants." At that moment, she also stopped in the corridor and looked around. Coincidentally, there is also witness No. 5, who also went to the restaurant to see the incident.This is the one-legged old seaman, Captain Trewitt, a neighbor of the Heite family, who accompanied the old lady and Conrad to the morgue two months ago to mourn and recognize the dead.Captain Trevitt appeared in the second of the two corridors leading to the dining room—not the one in which the main hall was visible, but the one in which the library adjoined the dining room. What they first saw was nothing out of the ordinary.Martha's eldest son, little Jackie, thirteen, was alone in the dining room, holding the glass of eggnog in his hand and staring at it.The old lady opened her eyes angrily, and she yelled. Jackie turned his head fearfully, and immediately noticed the audience in front of him. His ghostly face suddenly distorted, and a look of determination to play mischief jumped into his wild eyes. Lifting the glass to his lips, he quickly swallowed a big gulp of the milk. What followed was chaos.In an instant—just before his grandmother caught up, slapped the little boy's hand viciously, and screamed, "You know it's Aunt Louisa's, you scoundrel! I tell you How many times don't you steal from her!" At the same time—Jackie dropped the cup, and the shrewd little prodigal's face paled in shock.Glasses smashed to the floor, and eggnog milk was spilled all over the brick row of the restaurant.Then the hands that had made the muddy garden covered their mouths and began to howl.Everyone panicked, and they immediately realized that it was not a shameless cry, but a genuine, painful wail. Jackie's thin and stubborn body began to twitch, his hands twitched, his pain intensified, his breathing was heavy, and his face was surprisingly gray.He screamed and fell to the floor. There was an echoing scream in the corridor, and Martha rushed in. She was pale and fell to her knees, only to see the distorted facial features of the little boy in panic, and then fainted. The cry disturbed the whole house.Mrs. Arbuckle came, and her husband, George Abkel, the servant-chauffeur; and Virginia, the tall, thin old maid; Conrad flushed.The distressed Louisa was forgotten, standing helplessly in the corridor, at a loss.She seemed to realize something was wrong with her sixth sense, and she staggered forward, her nose fluttered, searching for her mother's position, and then grabbed the old lady's arm in fear. As expected, Mrs Hatter was the first to recover from the fright of the child's cramps and Martha's fainting.She jumped up beside Jackie, dragged the lost Martha away, held Jackie by the neck—he was already purple by now—pushed his stiff jaw open, and took a bony old finger of hers. Down Jackie's throat.He choked, then vomited. Her onyx-colored eyes lit up: "Abuko! Call Dr. Miriam!" she yelled.George Abuko trotted out of the restaurant.Mrs Hatter's eyes dimmed again, and she repeated the first aid without hesitation, and the little boy vomited again. Except for Captain Trewitt, no one else seemed to be moving, they just stared at the old lady and the writhing little boy.After Captain Cuiwei nodded approvingly at Mrs. Hatter's tough response, he walked away to look for the deaf and blind woman.Luisa felt him touch her soft shoulder, and seemed to recognize who it was, and put her hand into his palm to hold him. But the most important passages of the scene take place without anyone noticing.A puppy with spotted ears - little Billy's pet - wags his way into the restaurant when no one is looking.As soon as he saw the eggnog milk spilled all over the floor, he happily ran forward, and his little nose stuck his head into the milk milk. The maid Virginia screamed suddenly, and she pointed at the puppy. The puppy twitched weakly on the ground.He shivered and convulsed a few times.Then his four legs stiffened, and his belly suddenly swelled, and then he fell to the ground and remained motionless.Apparently, the pup couldn't get any more eggnog milk. Dr. Miriam, who lived nearby, arrived in less than five minutes. He wasted no time in the stunned Hatters, hardly even looking at them. The old doctor obviously knew his patient well. He only took one look at the dead puppy and the convulsively trembling boy, and then put on a straight face: "Send him upstairs immediately. You, Conrad, help me lift him up." At this time, the blond Conrad, who had already cleared his eyes , showing a horrified look, picked up his son and walked out of the restaurant, followed by Dr. Miriam, who had already opened the medicine box in his hand. Barbara knelt mechanically and began to rub Martha's numb hands; Mrs Hatter was silent, the wrinkles on her face as hard as a rock. Wrapped in a kimono and sleepy, Jier ran into the dining room, "What the hell is going on?" She yawned, "I saw the old doctor, Conrad, and the little villain coming upstairs..." Her almond eyes rounded She opened her eyes and shut up immediately, she had already seen the puppy dead on the ground, the eggnog milk splashing, and the unconscious Martha, "Why..." No one paid attention to her, and no one answered.She sank into a chair and stared into the pale face of her sister-in-law. A tall, fat, middle-aged woman in crisp white came in—Louisa's nurse, Miss Smith, who later told Inspector Sam that she had been reading in an upstairs bedroom all this time.She saw the whole situation at a glance, and her honest face was immediately covered with a frightened expression.She looked at Mrs. Hatter, who stood motionless as a block of granite; at Louisa, who stood trembling beside Captain Trevitt; and then she sighed and hissed Barbara away, Then he knelt down and took care of the unconscious woman in a professional manner. No one spoke.As if touched by the same nerve, they all turned their heads to look at the old lady at a loss, but Mrs. Hatter looked unpredictable.At this time, she put one arm around Louisa's trembling shoulders, and watched with a blank expression as Miss Smith began to attend to Martha's quick movements. It seems that after a century, there was a slight movement in the crowd.They heard Dr. Miriam's heavy steps coming down the stairs.He came in slowly, put down the medicine chest, glanced at Martha, who was recovering under Miss Smith's care, nodded, and turned to Mrs Hatter. "Jackie is out of danger, Mrs Hatter," he said quietly, "thank you for your quick reflexes. He swallowed not enough to kill him, and the immediate vomiting certainly saved him from serious illness, and he'll be all right .” Mrs. Hatter nodded haughtily, then raised her chin again, and stared at the old doctor with interest but cold talk, and she heard some serious meaning in his tone.But Dr. Miriam went away, inspecting the dead pup, sniffing the liquid on the ground, and finally filled a little syrup with a small vial he had taken out of his box, screwed the cap on, and put it away.He stood up and whispered something in Miss Smith's ear, and the nurse nodded and walked out of the restaurant.They heard her go upstairs to the nursery, where Jackie was lying on the bed moaning. Then Dr. Miriam bent down to Martha, helped her stand up, and told her to rest assured in a calm tone—the surroundings were as quiet as a cemetery—a strange but definitely not cowardly expression flashed across the face of the cowardly little girl , she staggered out of the dining-room and followed Miss Smith upstairs to the nursery.She passed her husband as she went upstairs, and neither of them said a word, and Conrad staggered into the dining room and sat down. As if she had been waiting for this moment, and as if Conrad's entry was a signal, old Mrs. Hatter slapped the dining table hard.Everyone was taken aback, except Luisa, who only hid further into the old lady's arms. "Good!" exclaimed Mrs. Hatter. "By God, it's all cleared up now. Dr. Miriam, what's in the eggnog milk that made the kid like that?" Dr. Miriam whispered, "Strychnine." "Poison, eh? I knew it. Just look at that dog." Mrs. Hatter seemed to have grown several inches, and she scanned the room. "I've got to get to the bottom of it, you ungrateful bastards!" Barbara sighed, put her slender fingers on the back of a chair, and leaned against the back of the chair. Her mother went on chillingly sharply: "That glass of eggnog belongs to Louisa. Louisa drinks it at the same time and place every day, as you all know. The eggnog milk was on the dining room table and poisoned the drink between the time the little rascal came in and grabbed the glass, obviously knowing that Louisa would come to drink it!" "Mom," Barbara said, "all right." "Shut up! Jackie saved Louisa's life by talking too much, and nearly lost his own. My poor Louisa is safe, but the fact remains that someone tried to poison her." Mrs Hatter said The deaf-mute-blind woman hugged her chest tightly, and Louisa made a sob-like incomprehensible voice, "It's all right, it's all right, honey," the old lady comforted her, as if Louisa could hear her, she He stroked his daughter's hair, and then his voice became harsh again, "Who poisoned the eggnog milk?" Ji Er snorted: "Don't be so dramatic, Mom." Conrad said weakly, "What nonsense are you talking about, Mom, who of us would—" "Who is it? All of you! You hate to see her! My poor poor Lou..." She tightened her hand around Louisa. "What?" Trembling, "Say it! Who did it?" Dr. Miriam said, "Mrs. Hatter." Her anger disappeared immediately, and her eyes turned suspicious: "When I want your opinion, Miriam, I will ask you, don't interrupt!" "That," replied Dr. Miriam coldly, "I'm afraid it can't be done." She narrowed her eyes: "What do you mean?" "I mean," replied Dr. Miriam, "that I have a duty to do. This is a criminal case, Mrs. Hatter. I have no choice." Branch phone. The old lady was tongue-tied, and her face became as dark and purple as Jackie's before. She pushed Louisa away, and she strode forward, grabbed Dr. Miriam's shoulder and shook violently. "No, you can't!" she yelled. "Oh, no, you can't, damn it, meddling! Make it public, can you? The more public it is, the more—don't touch the phone, Miriam! Look!" I--" Ignoring the old woman pulling his arm frantically and cursing frequently on his white hair, Dr. Miriam still calmly raised the phone. Miriam dialed the police headquarters.