The Man Who Loved Children

by Christina Stead

  “If I had my way—if I were a Stalin or Hitler, Clarigold—I would abolish school altogether for children like you and Looloo, and would form them into communities with a leader, something like I am myself, a natural leader, for man only learns in communities, he is a social animal. I love children and what I should like best, what I should love, Claribella, would be to form the Eastport, or Annapolis, Junior Community and introduce a totally new curriculum. In it the children would wander by the forests and fields and get close to their denizens, the fauna and flora of stream, thicket, and plain—they would be nature lovers, bird lovers. (For don’t think I don’t understand this foolish little passion of Looloo’s: it is good in itself, it needs only direction: I am not unsympathetic as she thinks in her poor big silly obstinate skull I) The system we have now is good at best for making ditchdiggers, clerks, and schoolmarms—not that I am one to laugh at schoolmarms—they are in the noblest profession in the world! But we must follow the curriculum of Nature herself.

  They must be bird lovers, nature lovers, water lovers, fish lovers, those schoolmarms and dominies: they must not teach formally, but Nature herself must teach them to love her and to fossick in her treasury until they find out, slowly but oh, with how much wonder! the inexpressible beauties and glories of her secrets—though they are open secrets to who can see. We unconsciously understand many of her laws—the thing is to bring them to consciousness, to know her, to follow her. Then we should have a different generation, the free air for our arts and sciences, the free use of natural gifts, free speech, few laws, free government freely elected and changing frequently, and phalansteries here, and law in the heart of nature where naturalists and poets of nature develop. It will come. In the meantime I have thought much over Looloo and will put her among the aristocrats of the human mind. I can show her the light and many like her. What terrible losses do we endure in our foolish, cut-and-dried system, when upon natural genius they wish to put a government stamp with a number. I am only speaking of government schools—I am utterly indifferent to institutions run for class, greed, and snobbery. You and I and Looloo, Clarigold, could make the world over: it would be a glorious world then, the world of men and women of good will. We want it; others want it. Why cannot we have it? Yes, we will have it, perhaps in our own lifetime. Only we must get away from this dry-as-dust system which crushes the inspiration, the faith, dreams, hopes, aspirations of youth.”

  Gravely Clare burbled through her straw in the bottom of her empty soda glass.

  “Looloo, for all her gloom and obstinacy,” said Sam, in a yearning voice, “is beginning to understand me, whether she will or not—though why she fights against me, I can’t make out—though I daresay she has told you a little since you are her best friend and playmate, Clare, about the little troubles we have both had—little troubles, scarcely worth mentioning, in a lifetime, just a little stone Fate put in the path of both of us because we are one nature. But she thinks the way I do, or is beginning to: and that is all I ask. I want you to understand, Clare,” he continued, pleading, “because I see Louie has not gone astray, she has chosen aright: you are the right friend for her, and I hope you and Looloo and I will have many intimate talks and walks together. For all education is outside, not inside, the schoolroom.”

  Clare sat very gravely tracing designs in the wet on the table. Once she raised her eyes and looked at Louie curiously, but Louie was not looking at her. Sam sighed with pleasure.

  “Well,” he said, stirring, “I suppose we better be stretching our legs, as well as our minds: what say, girls? Shall we walk a little?” He did not release them for a moment but walked them jollily round State Circle and through the retired green grounds of St. John’s College, discoursing on everything that met his eye—a stray dog, and the inroads of worthless dogs on planted deer, bred bobwhites, and all wild life of their state and how all dogs should be abolished or at most held on a leash (dogs had many other vices: they carried hydatids, bred lice, bit men, howled at night, made the fair countryside hideous with their wolvish brigandage in the guise of house protection, were vilely lubricous in decent streets, fouled footways, ate their own vomit, smelled to high heaven, and fawned and crawled on man as no decent-spirited beast could!). Then he saw the great liberty oak and sang, in their ears, an ode to that; and so on, for an hour or two, during which Clare mumbled and sometimes grinned and Louie looked stonily ahead or desperately aside.

  Soon Clare had to go home, but Sam took Louie’s arm and they walked slowly home together, Louie in utmost silence, and Sam talking, pleading, holding her ear, trying to rouse her to sympathy and enthusiasm.

  “You will soon understand many things, Looloo-girl.”

  She smiled sourly.

  “You will be like me!”

  She grinned, “How do you know I will be like you?” They had paused on the Eastport Bridge to look over to Spa House. Ernie and the twins were splashing about in the water, rushing out on the beach to shiver, flinging their arms about and rushing back into the warmish water again. At the same moment, Henny appeared running, and began beckoning with her arms and calling them out of the water.

  “I don’t want you to be like me,” cried Sam, annoyed; “don’t be such a dope. I only want you to think the way I do: and not even that if you have good reasons for your convictions.”

  Louie grinned sarcastically, “You say so: but you’re always trying to make me think like you; I can’t.”

  He became silent and walked along, dropping her hand, in a dignified stride. She felt terribly ashamed of herself: why couldn’t she be civil, after the four ice-cream sodas for her and Clare? But as sure as he opened his mouth, she knew, she would begin to groan and writhe like any Prometheus; she smiled apologetically, “It’s the nature of the beast.”

  Sam softened and looked down at her, “Why must you always be such an obstinate cuss?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I have such dreams for you, Looloo. Don’t always oppose me. I have enough opposition. Why aren’t you frank with your dad? Why don’t you tell me what you are always mooning about? You can come to me with everything. I thought at one moment that the demon had done her work, and that the forces of sin, crime, and evil had torn my daughter from me; and that even the onset of womanhood was making you more bitter. But the love you show for your teacher tells me that you are not like that: it is just a passing phase, a storm—let us say cat’s-paw of the pubescent period. I know you have little troubles general to your age and sex, that no doubt upset you. And then there is the situation at home.”

  Louie’s lip trembled, “When I begin to get near home, I begin to tremble all over—I don’t know why. I never told any one what it is like at home.”

  “That is right, Looloo: a merry heart goes all the way; there is nothing we cannot forget if we have a high ideal fixed before us.”

  She said in a rebellious tone, “That is not the reason: I do not say it because no one would believe me!”

  5 What will shut you up?

  Spring was coming and Sam was very restless. For weeks he would love Gillian Roebuck; then he would go to see Saul Pilgrim’s sister, Mrs. Virginia Prescott, a widow, in Francis Street, near Druid Hill Park. She sat amongst the rich and plentiful furniture left to her by the extinct Prescott and “planned” little meals for friends and let rooms. At times she gave music lessons. Sam thought her a wonderful little woman, and she obviously admired him, but in a respectable, respectful style. She was a round-faced, dark-eyed, dark-haired woman (like all Sam’s women), with nice false teeth, a short thick neck, short, thick bosom and little waist, much corseted: she was of medium height and very light on her feet. Sam did not love her, but when his feeling for the nature-spelled girl, Gillian, became too strong, he went and talked to Virginia. He was unable to see Gillian because they both felt they were too conspicuous in either Baltimore or Washington, and Sam despised hole-in-the-corner meetings: it was not worthy of them.

  But this spring Saturday t
hat he walked out with the two young girls, the need for Gillian rushed back into his veins like a relapse into fever. Only by talking, diverting his own attention all the time, could he forget her, smile and save himself from despair; and so when he reached home, sure enough, he gathered all his little ones round him, stealing them from whatever occupation he found them in, setting them round the long table in the square dining room that looked up Spa Creek, and he began to tell them all that had happened that afternoon—the walk, the wicked dilapidation of the Negro houses, the charming little wooden village that a Negro woodworker had there (birds, dolls, Mary-quite-Contraries, houses, picket-fences all in miniature and painted, in a little Swiss village), the Scyphomedusae, and Clare, and all he had said to Clare and Louie, with new variations. Meanwhile Louie got supper, and Henny, nearly mad with toothache and neuralgia, was crying in her room, her head tied up in an old flannel nightgown that once belonged to Tommy. Filled with love, with his eye on Louie, who was running backwards and forwards with the supper dishes, and who was wearing the pretty flowered blue dress that she had got new for school, he said to the children,

  “When Bluebeak [Louie] was very tiny and could hardly speak, she and I often communicated by human radio, telepathy: one day she was playing in a little blue dress, just the same blue as that blue dress she has now—it was made from the dress her mother, my dear Rachel, wore when she was married—we came out to Annapolis—isn’t that queer, kids!—the day before and she wore it then, too (for we were very, very poor). Bluebeak (I called her ‘Ducky’ then), Ducky was playing with her blocks—and she was wonderful at building with them, so serious, stopping for nothing, nothing could disturb her, shrieks, the milkman coming, the streetcar, nothing—I was standing there, thinking about poor Uncle Ebby (he didn’t look so old and worn then, though he had his troubles, he had bad troubles)—and my Ducky suddenly looked up and said, ‘Wassamattr wi’ Uncle Ebby, Daddy?’ Later on, I tried experiments with Bluebeak and they always worked. I always knew when you were sick, Bluebeak” (he broke off, addressing Louie who had just come into the room with a glass of water in her hand), “and the strange thing, is, kids, I always know what Bluebeak is thinking.”

  The children giggled at the new name, Bluebeak.

  “Her nose isn’t blue,” said Little-Sam thoughtfully.

  Louie laughed. Sam thought she laughed at the new name, “Whop you tee-heein’ at, Bluebeak?” he asked.

  “You always know what I think!” she said and shouted with laughter.

  “You think Sam-the-Bold can’t fathom your great thoughts?”

  “No.”

  “Then whop you larfin at poor Sam fower?”

  “You don’t always know what I think.” She became even more hilarious.

  “Don’t be a goat, Bluebeak.”

  She kept on laughing.

  “The way you think you’re so clever,” she managed to get out between explosions.

  He frowned, “Stop that hysterical teeheeing, Looloo.”

  She began to calm down, only giving an occasional giggle; the children were all giggling, all their little bellies and shoulders shaking. He said solemnly, “I will always know what Bluebeak thinks all her life.”

  Ernie burst out, “I betcha you don’t know what she’s got written in her diary.”

  Sam’s face cleared in a second. He looked at Ernie with surprise and delight, “A diary? Looloo, you bin keepin’ a diary, after all. Why, I told you to, but I didn’t know you did.”

  Louie protested that she did not but Ernie, only wishing to be of service, rushed into her bedroom and, though Louie rushed after him, he was back in a moment, ducking past her, evading her grabbing arm, and showing Sam the five-cent notebook which he had just taken from under her pillow. Sam began laughing like a jackass, and all the children began bobbing about, like targets in a shooting gallery, laughing and shouting. Ernie thrust it into Sam’s hand, but he was serious: he did not laugh:

  “You can’t read it,” he told his father.

  Louie stood like a stone image at the door, looking stupidly at them all.

  “What is it, Looloo?” asked Sam gently, pushing Ernest away from him.

  “A notebook.”

  “I see that!” He had not opened it. “What’s in it? Notes on nature?” He was very kind.

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  She flushed purple. “It’s in code; in code—I make up my own code: so that no one can read.”

  “You can show your poor little dad,” he cadged, and winked at the children who sat round simmering, waiting for the excitement. He insinuated, “It isn’t something you’re ashamed to show me, is it? You see, Looloo, though you think I’m too dopey to see through you, I know more’n you think.”

  It certainly was a pleasure to tease Louisa, for she fell into every trap.

  “I never said you were a dope.”

  “Well, if I ain’t a dope, I can see your own brilliant aphorisms,” and he winked at the children, in a circle of winks—for the past few weeks Louie had been solemnly stuffing them with the aphorisms of La Rochefoucauld, results of French books she had got from the library. After a short struggle, she burst into tears and gave in, unexpectedly. He then opened the rolled, dogeared little book (he was honorable, he had not looked at it without her permission!). On the first page were only a few lines.

  (i) 8 2800 h3f34 5300 q 083

  (ii) ejsy s dytsmhr yjomh yjsy ejrm s, omodyrt pt s v;rtl pt s kidyovr pg yjr I/2rsvr I/2tpmpimvrd s fre eptfd pbrt s ,sm smf ep,sim s vr;; nrhomd yp frbr;pI/2—

  (iii) jdjayfvy jpcjatjqzj sntzn tl etljay fjhafjl ej—

  (iv) Ii7i-7i5iii5iii-Ii7i-3i7ii-8iiIiii7i4iii3iii3l3ii7ii 3i-6iiiIi5ii-7ii5iii-4iii5iii5iii4ii2ii5iiiRiii-7ii3ii2ii-8ii2ii4iii4iii-Ii5ii2i-7ii3ii2ii-7i6i3iii2i2ii6iii-and the high barn, only yesterday found out they were dreams.

  The code expert had apparently got tired of this slow way of writing, and the fifth entry was merely in her French: “Dans les moyen ages les parents envoyaient les enfants à les etrangers.”

  “What does this say?” asked Sam, after studying all these items and pointing to the fourth entry. The children crowded round in great curiosity, while Ernie, who worked codes in school with a friend of his, pretended to ignore it. But Louie could not read her own entries and had first to go into her bedroom whence she came again with several scraps of paper, which she held away from Sam. Then she slowly read, “As soon as it was light I ran to look for the well and the spider and the high barn, only yesterday found out they were dreams.”

  He was very puzzled, “What is it? What does it mean? Is it a dream?”

  No: she explained that long ago before she could talk, she had dreamed about a well in the yard and never been able to understand why it was not there; she had tried to ask, but they had not understood her. So with other things. This treasure hunt fascinated Sam, who insisted on the translation of the other codes (the numbering referred to codes, one to four, not to the entries). After work that made her sweat, she finally read to him,

  “i: I will never tell a lie.”

  “Well, that’s a change, that’s something good,” said Sam, grinning and winking, his smiles reflected on all the little mirrors round him.

  “ii: What a strange thing that when a minister or a clerk or a justice of the peace pronounces a few words over a man and a woman a cell begins to develop.”

  This caused Sam much consternation and merriment when he finally understood it, for though he had given Louie a book, and Henny had given her a talk about marriage, Louie now imagined that marriage was essential to conception and that, provided no powders were administered to the bride and groom (she had made cautious inquiries on this subject—did they eat anything special on their wedding day?), a miraculous or magical event took place during the marriage ceremony. This was confirmed by her reading of various sentimental stories in which, after a hasty wedding, the bridegroom departed leaving the bride at the altar, and yet some months later
a baby appeared on the scene. She explained this, with embarrassment, but honestly enough, to Sam who guffawed into his hand, and worked himself up into a paroxysm of fun. But after the first few minutes, the children sat round sad and mystified, for in fact they saw nothing comical in Louie’s theory. Heaving with laughter, Sam insisted on Louie’s going on with the next item, even though she refused, with a very red face, and so she went on,

  “iii: Everyday experience which is misery degrades me.”

  At this he pulled a long face; and then there was nothing more but the ungrammatical French sentence which meant, “In the Middle Ages parents sent (their) children to (into the care of) strangers.”

  However, this all struck Sam as very bizarre, and he thought over the whole thing during supper. When Louie wanted to go to her room “to do her homework,” he made her come to work in the common room, as he called it, saying that he hoped she was not intending to do anything that she would be ashamed of in front of her little sister and brothers and himself; so that she stamped around the house in a great temper, and Henny opened her upstairs bedroom door and screamed out that she’d come down and strangle the great ox that thought it was funny to make so much noise.

  When the children went to bed, Louie went up with them to tell them their story, leaving Sam sitting alone, down in the common room, and when she came back to gather up her books, he was still sitting there with misty eyes and a thoughtful expression. She said very sulkily, “Good night.”

  “Doin’ beddybye so soon, Bluebeak?” Sam asked kindly.

  “Yes.”

  “Sit down, Bluebeak, Sam-the-Bold wants to talk to you. What do you mean by saying misery degrades you? What can you know about misery?”

  “The misery here at home.” She knew it was cruel, and she would have said it a thousand times to make it sharper a thousand times. After a silence, he said sullenly, “Sit down!”