The Man Who Loved Children

by Christina Stead

  “Murder might be beautiful, a self-sacrifice, a sacrifice of someone near and dear, for the good of others—I can conceive of such a thing, Looloo! The extinction of one life, when many are threatened, or when future generations might suffer—wouldn’t you, even you, think that a fine thing? Why, we might murder thousands—not indiscriminately as in war now—but picking out the unfit and putting them painlessly into the lethal chamber. This alone would benefit mankind by clearing the way for a eugenic race. I am glad to say that some of our states have already passed laws which seem to point to a really scientific view of these things, in the near future. But you are right, Looloo, the old savages went us one better—the Polynesians got there before us, in a way.”

  When they got home, Louie was full of excitement. She had never come so near to talking about her own ambitions, and Sam was in a comradely mood.

  “You will be all right, Looloo,” concluded Sam, kissing her good night. “You are myself; I know you cannot go astray.”

  “I won’t be like you, Dad.”

  He laughed, “You can’t help it: you are myself.”

  She sulked; she wanted to be like Eleanora Duse, not like Sam.

  “I wish I had a Welsh grammar,” she said swiftly.

  “Don’t be an idiot! What for?” He laughed.

  “I’d like to learn Welsh or Egyptian grammar; I could read the poetry Borrow talks about, and I could read The Book of the Dead.”

  “Learn good American grammar,” he said, good-humoredly, giving her a flip on the cheek.

  “I know that,” said Louie; “there’s no one as good as me.”

  “And learn to hold your shoulders straight,” he said, turning away from her and turning on the radio. “You know, Looloo, I’d like to get half an hour on a station and get direct contact with a broader audience: imagine talking to your fellow man from coast to coast!”

  She went up to bed insulted again.

  “I will repay,” she said, on the stairs, halting and looking over the banisters, with a frown. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay, no, vengeance is mine, I will repay.”

  She dreamed she had a large scythe, suspended in space, and in this dusky space was God, softly thundering with the rhythm of a pendulum, but the pendulum was the scythe. The scythe, which she was somehow operating, swung closer to the earth and began there to mow the grass. The heartbeats of God grew louder with long rollings, like the gong in the hall, and she thought, “It is the last day.” She woke. The gong was being beaten in the hall as if to get them up for the morning, but it was dark still. Down in the hall Henny cried,

  “I’ll bring people in; help! Louie, your father’s beating me!” Louie heard Bonnie rushing downstairs.

  3 Conversation.

  “He lives,” said Henny to herself, in her bed, “in a golden cloud floating about over a lot of back alleys he never sees; and I’m a citizen of those back alleys, like a lot of other sick sheep. I’d like to pull the wool off his eyes, but I don’t dare. He’d take the children away from me; I’d be branded, hounded—I know his Lordship. I’m steaming with this heat and the pain I’m in. I suppose he’s too good to notice that, because he keeps making Dr. Doe itemize the bill, the tooth patchings are getting few and far between. Connie O’Meara thinks she’s a modern woman; and I have a vote too. But the fact remains that a man can take my children from me if he gets something on me; and a lot of fat old maids and scrawny hags in their fifties stand back of every darn man-made law in this and any other state. I have to be pure and chaste before getting married and after—for whom please?—for Samuel Pollit; otherwise, I’m no good before and he can take my children after. He’s dying to do it, too, and have them brought up by that monster Jo Pollit, I suppose, or his beautiful Louisa, in memory of dear Rachel, the great love: anyone, as long as he grabs them away from me, because I’m no good.”

  Henny tossed and turned, trying to make some plans about her finances in Sam’s absence. Would she get her own family together and arrange a kind of unofficial moratorium with her creditors so that either she could pay them off by economy and reform, or her father or Hassie could be eventually moved to pay them off? What would she do if Sam’s stern nature or perfect morality should weaken or if, by any freak of scientific curiosity or middle-aged humanity, he might start looking into her life and asking himself what sort of a person he was married to? It would be all up with Henny and her children. Yet she daily trembled before the wild plunge of confessing herself to him and letting him know the worst; with rage, envy, malice, she thought of his ignorance of all her troubles. He thought she was a sort of ignorant servant, and so he paid her almost nothing. He hankered after women with degrees and time to run to committee meetings. “It is easy,” thought Henny, “to worry about peace conferences when you have servants, a car, and new hats; yes, then you give teas and so forth at home, to show off your new Persian mat and cocktail table. I thought of doing the same: I understand. But it is easy to get a little flutter out of the latest anti-alien bill out of New Mexico and the fate of peons when a man hasn’t the courage to get a mistress, or incur a debt, or take a drink of whisky!” Henny got up and started to play patience on her dressing table, brushing aside the extensive toilet set and looking at herself occasionally in the mirror. She liked to do this: it refreshed and encouraged her. “Good God, what an old hag!” she said as she sat down; “really, that Bert is a good soul! I must do something, dye my hair or something—but I hate it! Especially with my wrinkles! A young wig on an old face—very convincing. Why with his prudery and chastity the wretch has used me up more than four husbands.” She began to laugh, “But here he lives like a Mormon with women all round him, sister, wife so-called, servant at times, daughters to work for him, to say nothing of secretaries and public women to admire him and hold his hand, distant relations visiting him—and yet no one in his bed!” She slapped down the cards irritably, “Anything rather than lose my expectations! Poor wretches, poor miserable wretches! And to think the poor creature, his sister, that washes his floors for him can’t even kiss her knave of hearts because it doesn’t suit his name.” She threw back her head and laughed fully but falsely to herself in the mirror. The pack was out. She lifted two or three cards and peeped, then abstracted a card and put it in its place. But after two or three more moves, she suddenly began to gather them in and shuffle them. As usual, she had cheated without the game’s coming out. She began to lay the cards out again, then said, “Who the dickens cares if it comes out or not?” and, pulling her gown round her, went out to make herself some tea. First, she shut the door, because she had left the cards lying on the table. Louie and Sam both heard familiar noises in the kitchen. Louie dropped off at once again, but Sam had been restless and now lay awake thinking. Perhaps, now, in the middle of the night, he should go down and talk to her (or would she wake the children with her woman’s hysterics?). He turned and tossed while the teamaking was in progress; he was afraid of her execrations, afraid of her hardness and misery. He called a spade the predecessor of modern agriculture, she called it a muck dig: they had no words between them intelligible. At last he rolled out of bed and stood dubiously on his bedside mat shuffling his toes into each other, and then at the head of the stairs, shilly-shallying. At last he padded downstairs. There was a curious rumpling noise in the kitchen. In the great hall below it was cooler. He stood just outside the fall of light trying to see what she was doing. He was startled to see her leaning backwards on a loose-jointed kitchen chair, fixing a roller blind. He waited until she had regained her balance and then cried,

  “Pet, why couldn’t it wait till the morning? Of all the fool things!”

  “Oh, my God!” she cried, turning quickly with her hand on her chest; then furiously, “How you frightened me! Was that your idea? Why didn’t you let me hear you coming instead of sneaking up on me, spying on me in the middle of the night? What do you want? Are you spying on me as usual?”

  “Pet, why the deuce do you do the
se fool things? Half the accidents are caused by fool women in homes doing stupid things.”

  “If you think I care if I break my neck!” She laughed, all the deep smudges and lines in her face coming out. “A broken arm, and I’d have a holiday perhaps; a broken back, and I’d have a holiday forever.”

  “Henny, drink your tea. I came to talk to you quietly while the others are in bed—about my trip!”

  “I should think so! But why at this unearthly hour? Are you afraid of their hearing what I have to say to you?”

  “Let’s talk, Pet, while we have the chance. We are bringing up a family and we haven’t exchanged words for years.”

  “Whose fault is it, I’d like to know,” she said tossing her head and her poor naked neck with its goose flesh. “Every word you say to me is an insult. I used to go out with you till you insulted me in public. I used to have friends here till you insulted them. I won’t let my children hear their mother insulted. When they get sense what will they think of you treating their mother that way?”

  “I’m not going into the black past—”

  She interrupted him, turning her back, “If you have something to say, out with it and leave me alone.”

  “I am going away for six or eight months—that depends on funds and results,” Sam said deliberately, “and during that time you are, of course, my lieutenant, and have to run the house and bring up the children. I hope you will try to do it on a proper budget and without unnecessary waste. The remuneration is good, and we can perhaps save something. We will need it, Henny. I have heard that your father, with all his obligations and his keeping of your weak-kneed brothers and their big families, is not doing well. It’s pouring money into a quicksand to give it to your brothers. I wish there had been more like Hassie in the family. But let that pass. I want you to take thought to the future. And perhaps we can come to a better understanding. You know yourself that we can’t go on like this.”

  “I wish to God we could not,” said Henny desperately, “but we can, that’s the devil of it—”

  “It’s on account of this language,” Sam exclaimed impatiently, “that I have to come down like this in the middle of the night. My children ought not to hear such expressions. They hear nothing like that from their father. And I must insist on your controlling your language while I’m away. You know if I could I would take them from your influence—I cannot. The law keeps me in bondage and so I see them daily being filched from me, sneaked away by a hundred kinds of mean tricks and bitter expressions and my own home life run in the Collyer style—”

  “The Collyer style,” she repeated twice: “where would you be without the Collyer style? You Dr. Know-All! You don’t know where your bread and butter comes from. You know everything but that!”

  Sam gave her a hard look, “You know I cannot provide for two homes, or I would.”

  “You probably do as it is,” Henny teased. “No, I know you; you haven’t the guts for it. You just keep them tailing along.” He kept his temper, “Well, I see you’re not in a proper mood. I’ll wait till the morning. Get some sleep. Don’t stay up brooding and fixing your facial muscles into those hag lines: you look like a woman of forty-five!”

  She gave him a fierce look, “Just as you please!” She turned to pour out another cup of tea, her hands trembling more and more. She realized that he was still standing there. Swiftly she turned to him, “I might as well tell you now; why should I drag through another sleepless night? It’s beyond my endurance. It will kill me. Sam, let us separate! I can’t stand it. You’re not happy. I’ll go back to Mother and take the children while you’re away, and when you come back we can fix things up without anyone noticing particularly. Your going away makes just the right opportunity. We can close this damn-fool rackety old barn, and I’ll live at Monocacy. I’ll even take your stinking animals along and let the man look after them, if you want the kids to have them. And Father can let Tohoga House, if he’s as hard up as he seems.”

  Anger and balking gleamed in Sam’s eyes,

  “You will never break up my home. I know that’s been your object for years and the aim of all your secret maneuvers. I love my children as no man ever loved his before. I know men love their children, but mine are bound up in me, part of me—” he paused breathless for a moment. “In all my misery they are my great consolation; there could be no joy in the world like my home to me. Men wreck their lives, endure backbreaking toil for years for their children. Some women cannot even understand such love as man feels in his strength for those weak ones playing round him who—” He paused again, much moved. “The light of the years to come, to me; and the law would give them into your charge because you are their mother, no matter what kind of a woman you are.”

  “How dare you say that! How dare you—”

  “Silence!” he said very sternly. “I’ll say no more now. Get to bed. I see there are some things to be thrashed out. I might have known you had some such devilish scheme to work as soon as your chance came. You have no respect for my work; you only look meanly on this absence of mine as a chance to wreak all your spite and vengeance. When a woman hates, she will wreck a dozen lives to pay back what she conceives to be some injury. You only see in this a chance to further your own work of disintegration. You devil of rust and rot and boring. You will not smash my family life. You will carry your bargain through to the end. You will look after my children—” his voice trembled, and he said very bitterly,—“ours!” He collected himself and turned towards the door. “Good night! I’ll speak to you in the morning.”

  “I’ll divorce you,” cried Henny. “I’ll find a way. There must be a way. And I’ll take my children from you. The man who loves children! You can have your own. That’s all you really care about, anyway. You and she can go and live together and think about your rotten fine thoughts and you can weep over that sweet woman that would have made your life a paradise. Poor wretch! She died.”

  Sam turned and shouted, “Don’t try to smear my past happiness.” The house no longer contained snores either fantastic, light, and querulous, or determined and snorty, but Louie still slept well.

  Henny said, “When you come back there’ll be no home. You’ll have to find another way to provide for me and them.”

  “Shut up,” shouted Sam, “shut up or I’ll shut you up.”

  “You took me and maltreated me and starved me half to death because you couldn’t make a living and sponged off my father and used his influence, hoisting yourself up on all my aches and miseries,” Henny began chanting with fury, “boasting and blowing about your success when all the time it was me, my poor body that was what you took your success out of. You were breaking my bones and spirit and forcing your beastly love on me: a brute, a savage, a wild Indian wouldn’t do what you did, slobbering round me and calling it love and filling me with children month after month and year after year while I hated and detested you and screamed in your ears to get away from me, but you wouldn’t let me go. You were quite certain in your heart of hearts where your marvelous success came from, forcing me to stay here in this rotten old molar of a house to suit yourself, making me go down on my hands and knees to scrub floors and wash your filthy linen and your torn old bed sheets, your blankets, and even your suits—I’ve stuffed mattresses for you and your children and cooked dinners for the whole gang of filthy, rotten, ignorant, blowing Pollits that I hate. I’ve had the house stinking like a corpse cellar with your formalin that you’re proud of and had to put up with your vile animals and idiotic collections and your blood-and-bone fertilizer in the garden and everlasting talk, talk, talk, talk, talk,” she screamed in a hoarse voice, “boring me, filling my ears with talk, jaw, jaw, till I thought the only way was to kill myself to escape you and your world of big bluffs, and big sticks, saving the whole rotten world with your talk. I’ve stood you and your rotten stinking little brat combing lice from her hair from the public school and her green teeth falling from the roots with dirt and your sweat and you know nothing all
the time. It’s ten years and it’s too much, I’m through; you can pack your things and get put with your filthy brat. This is my house and you can go and find the tenement house you lived in, in Baltimore, before you slipped about in the slime in my father’s fishshop, with the slum brats you were raised with; find the house and stay in it with your loud-mouth, dung-haired sister and take your whore sister with you.”

  Sam hit her, with his open hand, across the mouth. Looking back madly at him over her shoulder, she raced into the hall, groped and found the stick in the dark and struck the gong, shrieking for the children to come downstairs and saying she would rouse the neighbors, that the beast was at her again. When she heard Bonnie on the stairs, she ran into the kitchen, seized the bread knife, and rushed at him, slashing him backwards and forwards across the arm and shoulder, and began slashing at his face before he had the presence of mind to knock it out of her hand and push her away. She stumbled and fell to the floor, where she lay exhausted and trembling.

  Bonnie and Louisa, who had been brought up short in the hall, petrified with horror, rushed into the kitchen, crying and begging the man and woman to come to their senses. Blind with her tears, and sobbing loudly, Louie, tripping over her nightdress, went to help her mother, who was resting on her elbow as she got up slowly, weeping dejectedly. Louie began tugging at her, but Henrietta pushed her away, saying, “Don’t touch me, I’ve had enough of everything!” while Bonnie was wiping the blood off Sam’s face and arm with a damp cloth, crying and saying, “What happened, Henny? Whatever happened, Sam? Oh, it wasn’t because of me? What did you do to her, Sam? The children—I”