by Ernest Poole
“I don’t know,” said Roger huskily. He felt a tightening at his throat. Abruptly he turned to his grandson.
“George,” he asked, “what do you want to be?” The boy flushed under his freckles.
“I don’t know as I know. I’m thinking,” he answered very slowly.
“Talk it over with your mother, son.”
“Yes, sir,” came the prompt reply. “But he won’t,” reflected Roger.
“Or if you ever feel you want to, have a good long talk with me.”
“Yes, sir,” was the answer. Roger stood there waiting, then turned and walked slowly out of the barn. How these children grew up inside of themselves. Had boys always grown like that? Well, perhaps, but how strange it was. Always new lives, lives of their own, the old families scattering over the land. So the great life of the nation swept on. He kept noticing here deserted farms, and one afternoon in the deepening dusk he rode by a graveyard high up on a bare hillside. A horse and buggy were outside, and within he spied a lean young woman neatly dressed in a plain dark suit. With a lawn mower brought from home she was cutting the grass on her family lot. And she seemed to fit into the landscape. New England had grown very old.
* * * * *
Late one night toward the end of July, there came a loud honk from down the hill, then another and another. And as George in his pajamas came rushing from his bedroom shouting radiantly, “Gee! It’s dad!”—they heard the car thundering outside. Bruce had left New York at dawn and had made the run in a single day, three hundred and eleven miles. He was gray with dust all over and he was worn and hollow eyed, but his dark visage wore a look of solid satisfaction.
“I needed the trip to shake me down,” he pleaded, when Edith scolded him well for this terrific manner of starting his vacation. “I had to have it to cut me off from the job I left behind me. Now watch me settle down on this farm.”
But it appeared he could not settle down. For the first few days, in his motor, he was busy exploring the mountains. “We’ll make ‘em look foolish. Eh, son?” he said. And with George, who mutely adored him, he ran all about them in a day. Genially he gave everyone rides. When he’d finished with the family, he took Dave Royce the farmer and his wife and children, and even both the hired men, for Bruce was an hospitable soul. But more than anyone else he took George. They spent hours working on the car, and at times when they came into the house begreased and blackened from their work, Edith reproved them like bad boys—but Deborah smiled contentedly.
But at the end of another week Bruce grew plainly restless, and despite his wife’s remonstrances made ready to return to town. When she spoke of his hay fever he bragged to her complacently of his newly discovered cure.
“Oh, bother your little blue bugs!” she cried.
“The bugs aren’t blue,” he explained to her, in a mild and patient voice that drove Edith nearly wild. “They’re so little they have no color at all. Poor friendly little devils—”
“Bruce!” his wife exploded.
“They’ve been almighty good to me. You ought to have heard my friend the Judge, the last night I was with him. He patted his bottle and said to me, ‘Bruce, my boy, with all these simple animals right here as our companions why be a damn fool and run off to the cows?’ And there’s a good deal in what he says. You ought to be mighty thankful, too, that my summer pleasures are so mild. If you could see what some chaps do—”
And Bruce started back for the city. George rode with him the first few miles, then left him and came trudging home. His spirits were exceedingly low.
As August drew toward a close, Deborah, too, showed signs of unrest. With ever growing frequency Roger felt her eagerness to return to her work in New York.
“You’re as bad as Bruce,” he growled at her. “You don’t have to be back,” he argued. “School doesn’t begin for nearly three weeks.”
“There’s the suffrage campaign,” she answered. He gave her a look of exasperation.
“Now what the devil has suffrage to do with your schools?” he demanded.
“When the women get the vote, we’ll spend more money on the children.”
“Suppose the money isn’t there,” was Roger’s grim rejoinder.
“Then we’ll act like old-fashioned wives, I suppose,” his daughter answered cheerfully, “and keep nagging till it is there. We’ll keep up such a nagging,” she added, in sweet even tones, “that you’ll get the money by hook or crook, to save yourselves from going insane.”
After this he caught her reading in the New York papers the list of campaign meetings each night, meetings in hot stifling halls or out upon deafening corners. And as she read there came over her face a look like that of a man who has given up tobacco and suddenly sniffs it among his friends. She went down the last night of August.
* * * * *
Roger stayed on for another two weeks, on into the best time of the year. For now came the nights of the first snapping frosts when the dome of the heavens was steely blue, and clear sparkling mornings, the woods aflame with scarlet and gold. And across the small field below the house, at sunset Roger would go down to the copse of birches there and find it filled with glints of light that took his glance far in among the slender, creamy stems of the trees, all slowly swaying to and fro, the leafage rich with autumn hues, warm orange, yellow and pale green. Lovely and silent and serene. So it had been when he was a boy and so it would be when he was dead. Countless trees had been cut down but others had risen in their stead. Now and then he could hear a bird warbling.
Long ago this spot had been his mother’s favorite refuge from her busy day in the house. She had almost always come alone, but sometimes Roger stealing down would watch her sitting motionless and staring in among the trees. Years later in his reading he had come upon the phrase, “sacred grove,” and at once he had thought of the birches. And sitting here where she had been, he felt again that boundless faith in life resplendent, conquering death, and serenely sweeping him on—into what he did not fear. For this had been his mother’s faith. Sometimes in the deepening dusk he could almost see her sitting here.
“This faith in you has come from me. This is my memory living on in you, my son, though you do not know. How many times have I held you back, how many times have I urged you on, roused you up or soothed you, made you hope or fear or dream, through memories of long ago. For you were once a part of me. I moulded you, my little son. And as I have been to you, so you will be to your children. In their lives, too, we shall be there—silent and invisible, the dim strong figures of the past. For this is the power of families, this is the mystery of birth.”
Suddenly he started. What was it that had thrilled him so? Only a tall dark fir in the birches. But looming in there like a shadowy phantom it had recalled a memory of a dusk far back in his boyhood, when seeing a shadow just like this he had thought it a ghost in very truth and had run for the house like a rabbit! How terribly real that fright had been! The recollection suddenly became so vivid in his mind, that as though a veil had been lifted he felt the living presence here, close by his side, of a small barefoot mountain lad, clothed in sober homespun gray, but filled with warm desires, dreams and curiosities, exploring upon every hand, now marching boldly forward, now stealing up so cautiously, now galloping away like mad! “I was once a child.” To most of us these are mere words. To few is it ever given to attain so much as even a glimpse into the warm and quivering soul of that little stranger of long ago. We do not know how we were made.
“I moulded you, my little son. And as I have been to you, so you will be to your children. In their lives, too, we shall be there.”
Darker, darker grew the copse and the chill of the night descended. But to Roger’s eyes there was no gloom. For he had seen a vision.
CHAPTER XV
On his return to the city, Roger found that Deborah’s school had apparently swept all other interests out of her mind. Baird hardly ever came to the house, and she herself was seldom there except for a has
ty dinner at night. The house had to run itself more or less; and though Annie the cook was doing her best, things did not run so smoothly. Roger missed little comforts, attentions, and he missed Deborah most of all. When he came down to his breakfast she had already left the house, and often she did not return until long after he was in bed. She felt the difference herself, and though she did not put it in words her manner at times seemed to beg his forbearance. But there were many evenings when her father found it difficult to hold to the resolve he had made, to go slowly with his daughter until he could be more sure of his ground. She was growing so intense again. From the school authorities she had secured a still wider range and freedom for her new experiment, and she was working day and night to put her ideas into effect.
“It’s only too easy,” she remarked, “to launch an idea in this town. The town will put it in headlines at once, and with it a picture of yourself in your best bib and tucker, looking as though you loved the whole world. And you can make a wonderful splurge, until they go on to the next new thing. The real trouble comes in working it out.”
And this she had set out to do. Many nights in the autumn Roger went down to the school, to try to get some clear idea of this vision of hers for children, which in a vague way he could feel was so much larger than his own, for he had seen its driving force in the grip it had upon her life. At first he could make nothing of it at all; everywhere chaos met his eyes. But he found something formless, huge, that made to him a strong appeal.
The big building fairly hummed at night with numberless activities. Fathers, mothers and children came pouring in together and went skurrying off to their places. They learned to speak English, to read and write; grown men and women scowled and toiled over their arithmetic. They worked at trades in the various shops; they hammered and sawed and set up type; they cooked and sewed and gossiped. “The Young Galician Socialist Girls” debated on the question: “Resolved that woman suffrage has worked in Colorado.” “The Caruso Pleasure Club” gave a dance to “The Garibaldi Whirlwinds.” An orchestra rehearsed like mad. They searched their memories for the songs and all the folk tales they had heard in peasant huts in Italy, in hamlets along rocky coasts, in the dark old ghettos of crowded towns in Poland and in Russia. And some of these songs were sung in school, and some of these tales were dramatized here. Children and parents all took part. And speakers emerged from the neighborhood. It was at times appalling, the number of young Italians and Jews who had ideas to give forth to their friends on socialism, poverty, marriage and religion, and all the other questions that rose among these immigrants jammed into this tenement hive. But when there were too many of these self-appointed guides, the neighborhood shut down on them.
“We don’t want,” declared one indignant old woman, “that every young loafer should shout in our face!”
Roger was slowly attracted into this enormous family life, and yielding to an impulse he took charge of a boys’ club which met on Thursday evenings there. He knew well this job of fathering a small jovial group of lads; he had done it before, many years ago, in the mission school, to please his wife; he felt himself back on familiar ground. And from this point of vantage, with something definite he could do, he watched with an interest more clear the school form steadily closer ties with the tenements that hedged it ‘round, gathering its big family. And this family by slow degrees began to make itself a part of the daily life of Roger’s house. Committees held their meetings here, teachers dropped in frequently, and Roger invited the boys in his club to come up and see him whenever they liked.
His most frequent visitor was Johnny Geer, the cripple. He was working in Roger’s office now and the two had soon become close friends. John kept himself so neat and clean, he displayed such a keen interest in all the details of office work, and he showed such a beaming appreciation of anything that was done for him.
“That boy is getting a hold on me lately almost like a boy of my own,” Roger said one evening when Allan Baird was at the house. “He’s the pluckiest young un I ever met. I’ve put him to work in my private office, where he can use the sofa to rest, and I’ve made him my own stenographer—partly because he’s so quick at dictation and partly to try to make him slow down. He has the mind of a race horse. He runs at night to libraries until I should think he’d go insane. And his body can’t stand it, he’s breaking down—though whenever I ask him how he feels, he always says, ‘Fine, thank you.’” Here Roger turned to Allan. “I wish you’d take the boy,” he said, “to the finest specialist in town, and see what can be done for his spine. I’ll pay any price.”
“There won’t be any price,” said Allan, “but I’ll see to it at once.”
He had John examined the same week.
“Well?” asked Roger when next they met.
“Well,” said Baird, “it isn’t good news.”
“You mean he’s hopeless?” Allan nodded:
“It’s Pott’s disease, and it’s gone too far. John is eighteen. He may live to be thirty.”
“But I tell you, Baird, I’ll do anything!”
“There’s almost nothing you can do. If he had been taken when he was a baby, he might have been cured and given a chance. But the same mother who dropped him then, when she was full of liquor, just went to the druggist on her block, and after listening to his advice she bought some patent medicine, a steel jacket and some crutches, and thought she’d done her duty.”
“But there must be something we can do!” retorted Roger angrily.
“Yes,” said Baird, “we can make him a little more comfortable. And meanwhile we can help Deborah here to get hold of other boys like John and give ‘em a chance before it’s too late—keep them from being crippled for life because their mothers were too blind and ignorant to act in time.” Baird’s voice had a ring of bitterness.
“Most of ‘em love their children,” Roger said uneasily. Baird turned on him a steady look.
“Love isn’t enough,” he retorted. “The time is coming very soon when we’ll have the right to guard the child not only when it’s a baby but even before it has been born.”
Roger drew closer to John after this. Often behind the beaming smile he would feel the pain and loneliness, and the angry grit which was fighting it down. And so he would ask John home to supper on nights when nobody else was there. One day late in the afternoon they were walking home together along the west side of Madison Square. The big open space was studded with lights sparkling up at the frosty stars, in a city, a world, a universe that seemed filled with the zest and the vigor of life. Out of these lights a mighty tower loomed high up into the sky. And stopping on his crutches, a grim small crooked figure in all this rushing turmoil, John set his jaws, and with his shrewd and twinkling eyes fixed on the top of the tower, he said,
“I meant to tell you, Mr. Gale. You was asking me once what I wanted to be. And I want to be an architect.”
“Do, eh,” grunted Roger. He, too, looked up at that thing in the stars, and there was a tightening at his throat. “All right,” he added, presently, “why not start in and be one?”
“How?” asked John alertly.
“Well, my boy,” said Roger, “I’d hate to lose you in the office—”
“Yes, sir, and I’d hate to go.” Just then the big clock in the tower began to boom the hour, and a chill struck into Roger.
“You’d have to,” he said gruffly. “You haven’t any time to lose! I mean,” he hastily added, “that for a job as big as that you’d need a lot of training. But if it’s what you want to be, go right ahead. I’ll back you. My son-in-law is a builder at present. I’ll talk to him and get his advice. We may be able to arrange to have you go right into his office, begin at the bottom and work straight up.” In silence for a moment John hobbled on by Roger’s side.
“I’d hate to leave your place,” he said.
“I know,” was Roger’s brusque reply, “and I’d hate to lose you. We’ll have to think it over.”
A few days later
he talked with Bruce, who said he’d be glad to take the boy. And at dinner that night with Deborah, Roger asked abruptly,
“Why not let Johnny come here for a while and use one of our empty bedrooms?”
With a quick flush of pleased surprise, Deborah gave her father a look that embarrassed him tremendously.
“Well, why not?” he snapped at her. “Sensible, isn’t it?”
“Perfectly.”
And sensible it turned out to be. When John first heard about it, he was apparently quite overcome, and there followed a brief awkward pause while he rapidly blinked the joy from his eyes. But then he said, “Fine, thank you. That’s mighty good of you, Mr. Gale,” in as matter of fact a tone as you please. And he entered the household in much the same way, for John had a sense of the fitness of things. He had always kept himself neat and clean, but he became immaculate now. He dined with Roger the first night, but early the next morning he went down to the kitchen and breakfasted there; and from this time on, unless he were especially urged to come up to the dining room, John took all his meals downstairs. The maids were Irish—so was John. They were good Catholics—so was John. They loved the movies—so did John. In short, it worked out wonderfully. In less than a month John had made himself an unobtrusive and natural part of the life of Roger’s sober old house. It had had to stretch just a little, no more.