“Not so blue as yours?”
“Oh, no.”
“And not so grey as mine?”
“No. Sort of in between.”
“And his coloring? His skin?”
“Well, he’s just a baby still. He’s so rosy you can’t tell what his skin will really be like.”
“It’s so soft,” said Seymour, as if unconsciously. He passed his hand down over the child’s body and caught one of the energetic kicking feet. John thought it a game and kicked harder with the other foot. Seymour caught that too. John screamed with amusement. He bounced up and down on Randall’s knees. Seymour said, “He’s awfully hefty, isn’t he? And full of energy.”
“And bright, Maggie says. I don’t know how they tell about those things, but she insists he’s much brighter than most babies. But nurses are like that about each one, I suppose.”
“Does he really know you? By name?”
“Well, of course he doesn’t call me anything. But he knows Maggie and her mother and me and we call ourselves by name and he makes a noise that Maggie says will turn into a word pretty soon.”
“Show me.”
Randall said, “Where’s Uncle Ran, John?” The child had been sitting facing Seymour and playing with his finger. Seymour felt him turn and fling himself against Randall and gurgle a delighted unintelligible noise. Randall hugged him and then gently leaned forward and said, “That’s Uncle Seymour. See? Hold out your arms, Seymour. Speak to him.”
“Will you come here, John?” Seymour’s voice was as soft as he could make it. John sat still, not sure of this unfamiliar person who had never been anything but a silent moving statue before. He did not make a motion to go to Seymour, and Randall said again, “That’s Uncle Seymour. Nice. Nice Uncle Seymour.”
Seymour thought suddenly of the bunch of seals on the end of his watch-chain, big heavy gold seals which had belonged to his father and his grandfather, which he had worn for years. He wore them still, from habit, just as he wound and carried the watch he could not see. He took out the seals and dangled them before John. They tinkled and glittered and John reached for them with a peremptory cluck. Seymour put them in his hands and held the other end of the chain. John shook and jangled the seals and Seymour jerked the chain gently as if he were playing a fish. Randall moved closer, hitching the hassock along. When the seals were back almost in Seymour’s hand John plunked forward with a gurgle and found himself in Seymour’s lap. This appeared to please him; he had the bunch of seals in one hand and something equally new in the other, a long, bristly, handle sort of thing which he tugged sharply. The face on the other end of the handle bent his way and Seymour laughed, saying, “Ouch!”
John gave the thing another tug and Seymour said “Ouch” again. This was a new game. John was delighted with it. He let out one of his shrieks of pleasure and flung himself against Seymour’s chest. Seymour’s arms closed round him and Randall got up from the hassock and went away.
CHAPTER 17
The tune continued, repeated a second time and a third. Seymour concentrated on his counting and folding, but he scowled and hunched his shoulders irritably. It was a silly little tune, something about a nut tree, which Randall often played and sang to John, and it was beginning to get on Seymour’s nerves. Even sitting at his desk in the library, with Randall and John downstairs in the drawing-room and all the doors closed, Seymour’s ears were so sharp that he was conscious of much that another person would scarcely have heard. He went on counting and carefully putting away his money. He had finally found a way to manage, now that his income and Randall’s were restored and some of their worst financial worries past. Since he could have no privacy if he must depend upon Randall to write checks and keep accounts for him, he had ordered the bank to deliver him one-third of his quarter’s income in cash on the first of each month. The bank’s messenger would lay out the packages of bills in the order of their denominations, and later Seymour would fold them, each denomination differently, in such a way that he knew exactly what it was. He left the one-dollar bills flat, and folded the fives in thirds, the tens in quarters, and the twenties once lengthwise. Then he put them all away in a steel strongbox which had belonged to his grandmother, and he kept that in the bottom drawer of his desk. The keys to both box and desk were always in his pocket. He felt much less helpless after this, and better still when without consulting Randall he had a telephone reinstalled in the house. He could now buy what he liked and pay for it when it was delivered. Not that he bought much. But it had been intolerable to be dependent upon Randall for every piddling trifle.
Seymour finished his counting and locked the strongbox away and sat for a moment listening, but trying not to listen, to that fool tune downstairs. Ever since Christmas this had been going on. First it had been that sickly sentimental German stuff, Stille Nacht and Tannenbaum. John’s second Christmas, three months ago, had certainly been the best time they had had in years, but Seymour had not altogether liked Randall’s arrangements. Randall had put the Christmas tree in the drawing-room, where John would have plenty of room to play with his new toys. That was his stated reason, at any rate. But the house for so many years had been apportioned on the basis that the library was Seymour’s and the drawing-room Randall’s that Seymour felt jostled by the latter’s becoming the centre of the Christmas stage. Of course the trunks and valises had long ago been removed, Randall had never said to what part of the house, but Seymour was still uncomfortable in the drawing-room. He never ventured far inside it. He stayed near the door, sitting on one of the fussy Victorian chairs which flanked it. Perhaps he had been particularly irked because so much of a child’s Christmas was the wonderland of its visual discoveries; its shouts and squeals of pleasure at the Christmas tree, its constant cry of “Look! Look!” He could still feel John staggering up to him, placing a wooden elephant from his Noah’s Ark in Seymour’s hands, crying, “Look, Unc’ Seymour. Look!” John at nineteen months could not know the meaning of blindness but he knew already that communication with Seymour lay in appeal to the long, perceptive hands, and in the sounds by which he fixed Seymour’s attention when a mere smile, which always drew a response from Randall, seemed not to get any notice from Seymour at all.
“I had a little nut tree,
Nothing would it bear—”
Seymour sat taut with fretfulness. Why did he dislike that harmless tune? His conscience troubled him; but he was uncomfortable anyway because he so often felt cross or critical of Randall, and he was too astute not to realize why. Randall had been right about John; nobody could help growing fond of him. It was fascinating for Seymour to hear and to feel, even when he could not see, how the child grew and became more interesting month by month. But Seymour knew perfectly well that in order for the child to be interesting it had to be interested; and there Randall had all the advantages. He read to John, and Seymour heard them talking about the pictures in the story-books, with John responding intelligently as soon as he could articulate at all. Randall played and sang with John; Randall took care of him on Maggie’s Wednesday afternoons out. When John made a discovery, when he wanted something, when he bumped his head, it was always Randall to whom he turned. How could it be otherwise? And how could it help but exasperate Seymour?
He did not want John to be the soft and too-sensitive little boy that Randall had been. He did not want them down there in the drawing-room, exactly as Randall in his own childhood had sat for hours with their mother, playing music and singing sentimental nursery songs. He wanted John to be a real boy, active and boisterous, good at sports and strong and quick and not afraid of rough games. It was one thing to want all this for John and quite another to know how to obtain it. Who was to teach him to roller-skate and ride a bicycle and play baseball and above all, sail a boat? Seymour did not know, and he could not even grope towards the outlines of a future which could make of John what he wanted him to be. He only knew now that there had been enough of that maddening tune down in the drawing-room, and ent
irely too much of all this playing and singing in the weeks since Christmas. He got to his feet and felt his way quickly downstairs.
Randall looked up as the door opened and was disconcerted to see the scowl on Seymour’s face. Randall’s hands paused on the keyboard and John cried, “More, Unc’ Ran. More.” He dropped his baby fist on the keys with a discordant bang.
“No, John,” said Seymour from the doorway. “That’s enough music for today.”
“Why, Seymour.” Randall’s blue eyes were puzzled. John began to bounce up and down with impatience, clamoring for the music again.
Seymour said, “No more music today, John. Time to do something else. Why isn’t he out of doors this afternoon, Randall?”
“Because the weather is bad,” said Randall. “What’s come over you, Seymour? I’m perfectly capable of deciding whether he should be indoors or out.”
“Sing,” said John. He banged the piano again. “Nut tree.”
Randall folded John’s arms quietly inside his own and sat there holding the child and looking up at Seymour. “Why the interference?” he asked. “I’m going to bring him upstairs to play with you in the library at five o’clock, just like any other day. Leave him alone now, Seymour.”
“I don’t want him mixed up in so much music all the time.” Seymour’s voice was waspish. “You’re going to make a sissy out of him.”
“Oh, nonsense. Look at him. He’s as husky as a horse. He’s too active ever to turn into a sissy. But he loves music and I’m going to see he hears all he wants.”
“You are not.” Seymour came slowly across the room with a tight, drawn look on his face which even John perceived, for his forehead began to pucker in a bewildered frown. Randall stared at Seymour as if he were looking at something he had never seen before. “It’s about time you stopped being so important around that kid,” said Seymour.
“Why?” Randall’s face was flushed and his usually mild expression had disappeared in tight lips and a sharply set jaw.
“Because I don’t like it, see?”
“That’s too bad,” said Randall, very angry. His voice was low. “Under the circumstances I think you would be wise to shut up, Seymour, and stay shut up. Do you understand me?”
Seymour scowled and said, “I know how that kid ought to be brought up. I know why, too.”
“Do you?” Randall rose from the piano and stood holding John, who put his arms about Randall’s neck and looked from one brother to the other with huge round uncomprehending eyes. “Well, I know exactly the same thing you know. And neither of us can ever prove what he knows.” His voice trembled and his face was pale and grave. “Now you go back to your library and think that over before you do anything you’ll be sorry for. We’re not going to have any more of this.”
“Sing,” said John again, kicking his heels. “Play. Nut tree.”
“Just a minute, John.” Randall put the child down on his feet and took one of his hands and put it in Seymour’s. He spoke quietly. “You’ve got to do something to reassure him, Seymour. You frightened him and by God you’re not going to do it again. I don’t like talking this way in front of him and that’s not going to happen again either.”
Seymour’s face worked. John stood looking up at him, the little pucker back again between his baby eyebrows. He tugged at Seymour’s hand and said, “Horsie, Unc’ Seymour. Play horsie.”
“Do it,” said Randall, barely aloud. He saw Seymour moisten his lips and bite them and swallow several times. He was imagining all too clearly the savage turmoil which but for John’s presence would have exploded in a raving temper. Seymour stood rigid, with John dragging at his right hand, looking up in bewilderment at the face he had never seen in this guise before. Seymour gritted his teeth; Randall saw his jaws flexing; suddenly Seymour got down on his hands and knees.
“Horsie!” cried John, jumping up and down. He clambered onto Seymour’s back and locked his arms round Seymour’s neck, and Seymour lumbered slowly across the room, with Randall watching to see that he did not bump into anything.
After that there was no trouble for a time. Seymour even tried to make silent amends for what his better sense knew to have been outrageous behavior. And Randall was surprisingly conciliatory. He saw now that in his early anxiety to melt Seymour’s bitter opposition to John he had not taken realistically into consideration the fantastic nature of the problem itself and of Seymour, growing more possessive and didactic all the time. This was part of his terrible fate, inseparable from his increasing self-absorption. How could one expect anything else? Yet once he grasped the situation in all its actual and eventual gravity, Randall could think of it only in terms of protecting John. He must be protected now from any further assaults of Seymour’s temper; and still more must his future be considered, a problem too portentous to grasp. John was two years old now, and the two years had moved fairly slowly, but time was beginning to frighten Randall, time was speeding up. He knew that children began to go to school when they were about six. School meant people, school meant identity, school meant the facing of questions which for Randall on the night he had taken John into the house and into his heart had been non-existent. I wouldn’t have done any differently in the beginning if I had realized every single problem ten times over, he told himself; but that made their realization no less worrisome now. Certainly it was a mistake to antagonize Seymour. I must keep him with me, he thought; we must act in partnership to make a solid footing under John no matter what it may cost each of us in effort and self-denial. He could understand how special emphasis on music might alarm Seymour; he would try to hold it to a proportion of John’s interests no greater than anything else. He would encourage Seymour in every sort of activity that he could share with John.
So he was pleased about the boat-sailing in the wash tub, although John was too young for it. And so he was helpful when Seymour said one day, “There is something I need and I don’t quite know how to go about getting it.”
“What is that, Brother?” They were at breakfast in the library.
“An electric motor. It sounds perfectly crazy, I know, but—”
“Well, you must have a use for it. What do you want it for?”
“I want to see if I can rig up a power-lathe at my bench downstairs. I could use it for various kinds of work that’s tedious by hand—and I haven’t got too much patience, have I?” Seymour laughed ruefully.
“I don’t know anything about such things,” said Randall. “What do you suppose is involved in it?”
“Well, I’d have to have access to electric current, for one thing.”
“You aren’t suggesting wiring the house for electricity?”
“God forbid! I have as much intention of our getting out of here as I ever had. All we need now is the patience to sit out the money question until we can afford to do it. Don’t you agree?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well then, I should think we could get a single electric line run in the cellar window from outside somewhere and then I could use a motor and hook up any power tools I might want.”
Randall said, admiringly, “Can you really do things like that just by touch? It seems incredible.”
“Not well enough,” said Seymour, with a grimace. “I might grind off a thumb or something. But at least I’d like to try. Only it isn’t worth spending much money on, and I just don’t know where to start.”
Randall said, “Do you suppose they sell such things second-hand?”
“Why not?”
They sat thinking.
“I know!” exclaimed Randall. “Here I read through all these newspapers every day and I simply ignore the pages we aren’t interested in.” He opened one of the morning papers to the last page. “Listen to this. A whole page full of notices of auctions and second-hand sales of everything under the sun. Leather. Contractors’ Supplies. Hardware. Chinaware & Crockery. Bicycle Manufacturing Plant.” He looked over at Seymour whose expression was fascinated. “Grocery Store. Upholstery F
indings. Here you are, Brother. Miscellaneous Job Lot Machinery and Electric Equipment. Generators. Dynamos. Assorted Tools. Lathes—why, this looks like just what you want.”
“What do you know about that. Where is this place?”
“It says an address and Abraham Bromberg, Auctioneer. Do you want me to go there?”
“Why, sure.” Seymour looked as delighted as John with a new toy.
“How will I know what you want to spend?”
“Oh, find out what the lot is likely to go for and telephone me and we’ll decide on our outside bid.”
When Randall got to the place he found that the job lot had come from a small commercial warehouse in Brooklyn which was disposing of remnants of stock of various bankrupt manufacturers. There were a number of other things beside the electric motor and two generators and enough assorted machine parts and tools to keep Seymour busy for months. Randall got the lot very cheap, and not until it was delivered to the house did he realize that among the other stuff he had bid in were two upright pianos and a small organ. Seymour was so excited about his haul that he scarcely remarked the instruments, but Randall was flustered. He told Seymour that he would find some way of re-selling them, and in the meantime he had them stored in the closed dining-room which nobody ever entered anyway.
Maggie and Mrs. Quinn were having one more cup of tea to wash down their midday dinner. John was asleep upstairs. It would be an hour before time to take him out after his nap. Mrs. Quinn dunked a piece of stale cake in her tea, to favor her bothersome gums, and Maggie sat with her black cotton legs hooked round the legs of her chair. She held her cup in both hands, braced by her elbows on the kitchen table. She looked thoughtful and her mother was not surprised when she spoke, for she said something they had said often enough before.
“Ma, which one do ye think it is?” she asked.
My Brother's Keeper Page 38