The Man Who Loved Children

by Christina Stead

  When the mail came in, in the morning, Sam at the breakfast table, with a bedraggled expression, would show Ernie and Louie the articles which attacked him and say, “See, see there; see how base mankind can be—but you must learn not to hate, but to understand: who understands all, forgives all.” But Louie and Ernie would cry desperately, “Answer the letters: why don’t you answer the letters?” Then Sam would enter into a long defense, point by point, showing them everything that was wrong in the attack, and naming the interest which inspired each separate enemy.

  “Oh, why don’t you write, Dad? Why don’t you put it all down and send it in?” cried Louie, wringing her hands, with long, drooping cheeks, “Why do you let them say it?”

  And Ernie, desperate too, anxious, fretted by his calculations (where did their money come from?), would say, “Write in, Dad! Please write in; why don’t you tell them? If it’s so easy to show them that they’re all liars; why don’t you do it? Please write in, Dad, why don’t you?”

  But Sam would shake his head, more mournful and pale than ever, and look at them both, and then at them all, with his big frank blue eyes, wet with tears, “At present the evil ones are in the ascendant: we must wait till they are on the run, but we will get them on the run.”

  “But how? But how?”

  “Everything comes to him who waits,” Sam would smile painfully. “Looloo, don’t be impatient: we must not fight the enemy with his own weapons.”

  “You are not fighting at all, Dad,” cried Louie. “You tell us all this: you can write it in. Look, it is in all the papers: everyone will believe them. I can’t understand why you don’t.”

  All the children, though, believed that Sam was utterly innocent, which in fact he was, innocent too, of all knowledge of men, business, and politics, a confiding and sheltered child strayed into public affairs.

  The children felt more worried every day, those too old to be diverted into jobs and projects. Where was their food coming from? There were to be repairs and some new building in the Collyer Seafood business in Aliceanna Street, and Henny would get no dividends for two years at the earliest. Mother could no longer get them clothes on credit at Old David’s store, for the account was closed. Already Sam had formed a complete, new project, whereby Louie was to leave school and be his secretary (attending business courses at night), and Little-Womey was to leave school as soon as she could, after attending cookery and housekeeping courses, and would look after the kitchen.

  “Even if the worst comes to the worst,” said Sam, rather cheerfully, “you will see, Sam-the-Bold will manage: never say die! Sam-the-Bold cannot be conquered by circumstances. The evil ones may fly, but when the sky is clear, Sam-the-Bold has a kite to fly after them.”

  Through the long holidays, Henny, tight-mouthed and determined, went at her work. In her poor clothes, she would take trips, be away for hours, going to Baltimore, to see her sister Hassie, or Uncle Archie. Once or twice Uncle Archie advanced her money upon her expectations, and on these days Sam would find a little pile of money on his desk, with a note beside it:

  Sam Pollit: “Use this for household expenses,” or Sam Pollit: “Get yourself a new shirt.”

  No one knew how they rubbed along; but when schooltime came, Louie was allowed to go to the Annapolis High School in a new flannel blouse and seedy old serge skirt which Hassie had sent her, and a cinnamon brown overcoat given her by Auntie Jo. She felt pretty wretched till she got to the school when she saw before her a flock of girls, half of them looking like a litter of puppies tied inside a sack, tumbling and rolling; and, adding herself quietly to the homely and ill-dressed section and subtracting herself, without even a twinge, from the pretty and smart section, she began to bounce about in her new sphere with stolid self-confidence.

  3 Miss Aiden.

  There were several new teachers in school, two fresh from the university. Of these two, one was a staggering beauty, black-haired, blue-eyed, and with a high fresh color; and the other, tall, limber, with deep gold hair and a fresh, sonorous voice, always wore a red swagger coat. There was a third, also new, though not glamorous, who had drab hair, a worried expression, who wore brown and gray eternally, was timid and cried when the girls made a noise. The susceptible girls at once divided into two camps—those who went for the beauty (Miss Bellmore) and those who went for the redcoat (Miss Aiden). Everyone but a few timid, uninteresting souls did her best to make the drab one (Miss Paramore) lead a life of misery. Louisa, who had done badly in elementary and seventh and eighth grades, discovered dazzling aptitudes within a few days in the new school. Several girls announced that they were Louisa Pollit’s friends and insisted on her company. No sooner had Louisa opened her mouth than Miss Aiden gave her a smile of nonpareil sweetness and understanding, and no sooner did Miss Aiden or Miss Paramore or Miss Bellmore appear, moving kaleidoscopically through the leaves and paths, than all the girls fell to laughing, and thousands of suggestions, skits, and quotations reared their heads. All the girls had grown out of their clothes in a few days, or at least they looked like it, and associations formed naturally of friendly thinkers: girls who spoke freely but eschewed vileness, girls who giggled over dirty jokes and thought about men, girls who went frantic over what was in the newspapers, featherheaded girls who thought about clothes, sad grinds who thought about homework. It was wonderful and new; it was Arcadia. No sooner did Louie see Miss Aiden, with her painted red mouth and goodhumored smile than she began sneering and inventing stories about her, and then the first time she sat in this redcoat’s class, she felt obliged not to listen to the lesson but to get down on paper all the comicality in her heart; and this was what came out:

  “There was a wedding at the circus! The hermaphrodite married the bearded, the giant the dwarf, the fat lady the hungry wonder, the clown in bags the lady in tights, the flea the elephant, the tiger a lily, the tent a Pole, the wind a Russian, the Hairless Mexican a hairtonic, the barfly a pony, the dollar a bill, the prophet a punched nickel, the instep a stepin, the punch a free pass, the judy a free-show, the cough a little hoarse, the neck a noose, the papal bull a chinashop, the pope’s nose a tailfeather, the grille a sideburn, the kink a Jew, the fly a trapeze. Who told all this? The belle tolled. Who knelt? The bell knelled. Who opened the door? A jar. Who had a flower? The doughnut. Who baked the cake? Beg and borrow a pound. What size? Two sighs, seven tears. When was it ready? Tomorrow. What was the fruit? Henfruit, cockscombs, larkspurs, chickpeas, crabapple, passion-fruit, breadfruit, deadseafruit. What came in on two legs? A breadbasket. Who drew the carriage? Shanks’ ponies. Who paid the money? Pneumonia. Who was there? You-all. When was it? When time was a pup.”

  This production, which left Louie astounded (for she had no idea how she had written it, nor why with such ease), followed the tracks of all the other notes and scraps of paper which were passing round the class, and caused such gales of idiot laughter, beginning with chuckles, sniggers, and ending in uncontrollable spasms, that within a few minutes Miss Pollit found herself on the floor, the cynosure of neighboring eyes, while Miss Aiden, frowning, and then grinning, read it through.

  “Did you write this, Louisa?”

  “Yes, Miss Aiden.” (Giggles.)

  “When?”

  “Just now.” (Whispering.)

  “Is that what you come to class for?”

  “No, Miss Aiden.”

  (“No, Miss Aiden,” confirmed the class in varying tones, groans, and flutes.)

  “Go back to your seat,” said the mistress firmly. Louie expected the worst: she would be late home again, but to her intense surprise, she was not punished, and she sat there blushing badly, thinking of the handsome and agreeable creature in possession of her paper and able to see to the vacuous center of her silliness.

  “I’ll never do it again,” thought Louisa a thousand times, more miserable than she had ever been before, as if one of those dreams had come true, those dreams where she found herself walking down the street in a hat and a bodice without a
ny skirt or shoes. She did not dare to look at Miss Aiden, but sulked and blushed till the end of the lesson, when Miss Aiden with divine pity gave it back to her.

  At home the domestic agony was intense. Everything that happened, a nail forgotten and left to tear the children’s bare feet, set Henny screaming at them. The short entente between Louie and her stepmother was at an end. Now “the mere sight of the great flopping monster” made Henny want to tear her own eyes out, and the “mere sight” of Ernie going around with “his lumps of lead” made her want to jump in the creek, and the “mere sound of the boys snarling at Evie for their breakfast” made their mother want to pack up her traps and leave them all forever. It was not easy at home, and being kept in was a pleasure to Louie. It gave her a chance to dawdle along the road home instead of going by the bus and to chat with one or other of her friends. She had been adopted by two girls, Leana and Edie: and in the meantime, her appetites were excited by a classmate named Clare who described herself as a “Kind of Wobbly” (whatever that was), a tall, vigorous, yellow-haired girl with boy’s curls and a splendid medallion face. Clare was dressed like a ragpicker’s girl, and slouched and scuffled along, partly out of good-humor and partly because she wore ragpicker’s shoes, from which either the toe, the heel, the upper, or the sole was always missing. Her lisle stockings of a washed-out dung color were wrinkled, dirty, and in holes; her blouse would be on inside-out, rough-dry, her skirt spotted and with hem hanging. Her shapely artisan’s hands would be dirty, and even her face, if she cried (she cried sometimes, frankly), would show clean traces. For lunch she would have a sandwich or some dry bread, and she never had any money for school contributions.

  “You ought to know Clare Meredith,” girls would say, watching her, in a disinterested tone. Clare forever wasted time, was always chatting with her large shapely curly head laid just above the top of the desk, next to some other head, always making up skits and sending them round the class, little bits of paper written in an exquisite, fantastic small hand. She had never done her homework, nor was ever ready for a question, but would laugh up at the teacher with a gay, good-natured sloven’s laugh.

  One day, Louie received a note in class, sent by desk express,

  “I’ll kiss thy foot; I’ll swear myself thy subject,” and there was Clare, giggling and grinning at the far end of the room like a curly mooncalf, bobbing and hawhawing, showing all her strong white teeth, a blue-eyed female Caliban. Louie at once seized her pen and, with a most serious look, wrote back, by the same post,

  “By this good light, this is a very shallow monster. I am afeard of him! a very weak monster.”

  Clare’s yell of laughter brought down the house, and even the mistress, on this occasion the Bellmore, laughed, and said in her distant silvery voice, “Gals, gals!”

  Louie became chief flatterer of Miss Aiden. As soon as Louie got home (she went slower and slower as she neared the gate of Spa House and stayed a long time in the shadowed drive, for now the storms were more than could be borne), and had done the vegetables, she would pretend she had homework and, rushing upstairs, shut herself in her room, where she would go on with her poem, or scene, for the next day. She made a point of never going to school without a poem or scene (in a play) in Miss Aiden’s honor. Leana, Edie, and (soon) even Clare, laughing but loyal, would wait for her at the gate and ask, “Have you got a sonnet today?” Louie had formed a magnificent project, the Aiden Cycle. The Aiden Cycle would consist of a poem of every conceivable form and also every conceivable meter in the English language, each and every one, of course, in honor of Miss Aiden. Part of the Aiden Cycle was to be The Sonnets, dedicated to The Onlie Begetter, a little thing which would occupy but a brief time in that life which was entirely for Aiden. The high school contained only one such fanatic, and thus Louie became chief of all the Aiden men. Clare inclined towards Bellmore, and even wrote one sonnet (a comic one) in her favor, but she bowed before the enraptured Louie, and this intensity of feeling brought her to Louie. In a short time, though, she would chat with her old friend or lie down on a bench with her torn straw hat over her head, taking the sun. She was mostly to be seen with Louie holding long and earnest discussions. She tried to get Louie to be a socialist and to read Progress and Poverty, but all other passions, at this moment, meant nothing to Louie. At school, when she saw the red coat come weaving up the path, she was joyful, all triumphant love; at home, she had her hands full, using up all the spare hours to learn her plays and write her Cycle. She recognized that the Cycle was a lot of work, and she never dropped it. She began to learn Paradise Lost by heart. Why? She did not know really: it was a spectacular way of celebrating Aiden.

  Sam and Henny complained bitterly of the amount of homework given to a growing girl and thought the teachers must be mad; they were always threatening to write to the school; and then Sam decided that all Louie’s homework must be done in the family dining room, under the eye of one and all—it would prevent dawdling, and enable her to learn to concentrate—for if one can work when bedlam is loose, then one can work anywhere at all. This was Sam’s theory. Furthermore, when the others had gone to bed, Sam was full of little speculations and homilies, trying to draw her out, trying to get in touch with her. Following her bad example, Ernest too was drawing away from Sam, and Sam felt that he must fight it out with Louie; it was now or never in the struggle for power.

  The children soon knew all about Miss Aiden, and tried to tease their eldest about her love, but she was too serious, and too enthusiastic, and she would recite to them for hours on end, while they sat with rosy, greedy faces upturned, listening. Then Louie would act, and tell them how it would be done on the stage, thus and thus; and she would try to get them to act with her. Sometimes, Sam would creep in, unexpected, in this verdant theater at the orchard’s end, and would stand quietly at the back, rather surprised at his daughter. On these occasions only did a kind of humility creep into him; and Louie, seeing it, would strike at him verbally, or flash a look which said, plainer than speaking, “I am triumphant, I am king.”

  4 Clare.

  If Miss Rosalind Aiden was the heavenly love, Clare was the alter ego. Everyone knew about her: the older ones thought her a crazy kid, while the younger ones wondered who was that dirty, ragged girl full of shouts and horseplay. When she came in through the school gate, without a hat (her hat had at last fallen to pieces), she would rip off the ragged overcoat and, showing its ripped lining and hanging seams, she would begin to sell it, ducking and grinning solicitously, smoothing down its burst seams and expatiating on its beauty, and she would offer it at auction for a dollar, fifty cents, ten cents. One day a youngster offered her ten cents for it, and she sold it, took the ten cents, and refused to take the coat back; no, it had gone under the hammer and been parted with fair and square, said this tragic muse. She trudged home to her home in a yard in Compromise Street, in Annapolis, without a coat, although it was a gray November day, with a sneaking, damp breeze and snow threatening, and the next day came in a man’s coat that a neighbor, an old man, had lent her. She herself had gone in and borrowed the coat till he should ask for it. She turned out the pockets before half the school, finding string, tickets, and a mucus-streaked handkerchief which she flung away from her with a magnificent gesture of loathing, and all the time, unself-conscious, amused at herself,

  “Look at this now—a bit of string to hang myself with: but my neck’s too thick—he didn’t think of that! And the pocket’s—where’s the pocket? Ouch! I can feel my knee—my knee’s in the pocket. But who said anything about pockets? Look, just air—it’s lined with air: but that’s a swell style, the latest thing: there are more wearing pockets of air and linings of air at this minute than linings of silk. Who cares for the naval dears with their plackets and braid? The best part of mankind wears overcoats entirely of air. First a suit of skin, then a decoration of hair, then an overcoat of air!”

  Then deciding that she was dissatisfied with her overcoat, air or no air, she woul
d shuffle off a few steps, and Louie, who would have been standing, grinning but dissatisfied, sometimes rather stern, at the edge of the crowd, would take her arm and say, “Clare, Clare!”

  “What, Louie?”

  “Clare—” Louie knew that Clare only behaved like this when her poverty rankled worst; Clare’s poverty was no secret to anyone—she came of a brilliant family that after the death of father and mother had come into the hands of a poor, stiffnecked maiden aunt. One eldest sister was even now at work, helping to keep the two younger sisters and small brother. As soon as Clare graduated, she would take up the burden. Half the weeks in the year it was a question whether Clare would have a roof over her head at all. What was there to say? Clare would smile at her ruefully and grip her hand.

  “Ah, Louie, what do I care? When I get through I’ll earn; but where will I be still? There’s my sister and brother and two mortgages—the only thing that worries me is the boys: the brutes won’t look at a poverty like me! What does it matter what I am?” Louie was silent. Then stupidly she would say, “Well, you’re only fourteen, Clare—” Clare would open her arms wide, spreading the loose garments that fell about her, with a gesture that somehow recalled the surf beating on a coast, the surf of time or of sorrows,

  “Look at me? Will I ever be any different?” Clare resolutely refused to visit Louie at her home and would never even cross the bridge to Eastport for fear of meeting Louie with her family; she would always refuse, hanging her head and smiling to herself, though at what, Louie could never make out. “You don’t want me, Louie: I’ll see you at school.” One day, just before Christmas, she came, without galoshes, but dragging, on a stockinged foot, a completely ruined shoe. Her toes peeped through holes in the stockings. Some of the girls who were hanging about exclaimed, pointed, and others running up commenced to make a great hullabaloo. Clare stopped in her tracks and, laughing at the great fun, picked up the shoe out of the muddy snow and began swinging it round and round her head: suddenly it flew loose and seemed to fly into the sky, but it landed on the roof instead and while they all stood laughing hysterically, holding their bellies and going into shrieks of laughter, Clare rushed into the janitor’s room, took a ladder, scrambled up to the roof, and began mounting it towards the shoe, making a fall of snow, but’ still going up carefully on hands and knees. Her patched and tired underwear could be seen all over the grounds. An old teacher (Clare was her protégée) came running and, in a stern high voice, cried out to Clare to come down quickly, while the janitor with a long pole began to poke after the shoe. Clare, looking round, and greeting her audience with a flustered laugh, began to back down again—the shoe slid towards her, she tweaked it off the roof and sent it flying down to the ground. She happened to be looking at her friend, the old teacher, and so the shoe struck the woman in the face. She started back but said nothing, only blushed and rubbed her face; and then she stooped and picked up the miserable object, and stood with it dangling in her hand until Clare had reached the ground again. The children, much struck, had fallen silent, and as Clare sheepishly came up to the woman and said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and they looked from one to the other, they saw that Miss Harney (the mistress) was crying. She took Clare under the arm, upstairs and into her own room. Louie trailed after her, and because Miss Harney also liked her, she was allowed to remain there.