by Ernest Poole
But suddenly he remembered that Bruce had always been here before to meet his wife and children, and that Edith on her approaching train must be dreading her arrival. And when at last the train rolled in, and he spied her shapely little head in the on-coming throng of travellers, Roger saw by her set steady smile and the strained expression on her face that he had guessed right. With a quick surge of compassion he pressed forward, kissed her awkwardly, squeezed her arm, then hastily greeted the children and hurried away to see to the trunks. That much of it was over. And to his relief, when they reached the house, Edith busied herself at once in helping the nurse put the children to bed. Later he came up and told her that he had had a light supper prepared.
“Thank you, dear,” she answered, “it was so thoughtful in you. But I’m too tired to eat anything.” And then with a little assuring smile, “I’ll be all right—I’m going to bed.”
“Good-night, child, get a fine long sleep.”
And Roger went down to his study, feeling they had made a good start.
* * * * *
“What has become of Martha?” Edith asked her father at breakfast the next morning.
“She left last month to be married,” he said.
“And Deborah hasn’t replaced her yet?” In her voice was such a readiness for hostility toward her sister, that Roger shot an uneasy glance from under his thick grayish brows.
“Has Deborah left the house?” he asked, to gain time for his answer. Edith’s small lip slightly curled.
“Oh, yes, long ago,” she replied. “She had just a moment to see the children and then she had to be off to school—to her office, I mean. With so many schools on her hands these days, I don’t wonder she hasn’t had time for the servants.”
“No, no, you’re mistaken,” he said. “That isn’t the trouble, it’s not her fault. In fact it was all my idea.”
”Your idea,” she retorted, in an amused affectionate tone. And Roger grimly gathered himself. It would he extremely difficult breaking his unpleasant news.
“Yes,” he answered. “You see this damnable war abroad has hit me in my business.”
“Oh, father! How?” she asked him. In an instant she was all alert. “You don’t mean seriously?” she said.
“Yes, I do,” he answered, and he began to tell her why. But she soon grew impatient. Business details meant nothing to Edith. “I see,” she kept saying, “yes, yes, I see.” She wanted him to come to the point.
“So I’ve had to mortgage the house,” he concluded. “And for very little money, my dear. And a good deal of that—” he cleared his throat—”had to go back into the business.”
“I see,” said Edith mechanically. Her mind was already far away, roving over her plans for the children. For in Roger’s look of suspense she plainly read that other plans had been made for them in her absence. “Deborah’s in this!” flashed through her mind. “Tell me what it will mean,” she said.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to try to do without your nurse for a while.”
“Let Hannah go? Oh, father!” And Edith flushed with quick dismay. “How can I, dad? Five children—five! And two of them so little they can’t even dress themselves alone! And there are all their meals—their baths—and the older ones going uptown to school! I can’t let them go way uptown on the ‘bus or the trolley without a maid—”
“But, Edith!” he interrupted, his face contracting with distress. “Don’t you see that they can’t go to school?” She turned on him. “Uptown, I mean, to those expensive private schools.”
“Father!” she demanded. “Do you mean you want my children to go to common public schools?” There was rage and amazement upon her pretty countenance, and with it an instant certainty too. Yes, this was Deborah’s planning! But Roger thought that Edith’s look was all directed at himself. And for the first time in his life he felt the shame and humility of the male provider no longer able to provide. He reddened and looked down at his plate.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I’m strapped, my child—I can’t help it—I’m poor.”
“Oh. Oh, dad. I’m sorry.” He glanced up at his daughter and saw tears welling in her eyes. How utterly miserable both of them were.
“It’s the war,” he said harshly and proudly. This made a difference to his pride, but not to his daughter’s anxiety. She was not interested in the war, or in any other cause of the abyss she was facing. She strove to think clearly what to do. But no, she must do her thinking alone. With a sudden quiet she rose from the table, went around to her father’s chair and kissed him very gently.
“All right, dear—I see it all now—and I promise I’ll try my best,” she said.
“You’re a brave little woman,” he replied.
But after she had gone, he reflected. Why had he called her a brave little woman? Why had it all been so intense, the talk upon so heroic a plane? It would be hard on Edith, of course; but others were doing it, weren’t they? Think of the women in Europe these days! After all, she’d be very comfortable here, and perhaps by Christmas times would change.
He shook off these petty troubles and went to his office for the day.
* * * * *
As she busied herself unpacking the trunks, Edith strove to readjust her plans. By noon her head was throbbing, but she took little notice of that. She had a talk with Hannah, the devoted Irish girl who had been with her ever since George was born. It was difficult, it was brutal. It was almost as though in Edith’s family there had been two mothers, and one was sending the other away.
“There, there, poor child,” Edith comforted her, “I’ll find you another nice family soon where you can stay till I take you back. Don’t you see it will not be for long?” And Hannah brightened a little.
“But how in the wide wurrld,” she asked, “will you ever do for the children, me gone?”
“Oh, I’ll manage,” said Edith cheerfully. And that afternoon she began at once to rearrange her whole intricate schedule, with Hannah and school both omitted, to fit her children into the house. But instead of this, as the days wore on, nerve-racking days of worry and toil, sternly and quite unconsciously she fitted the house to her children. And nobody made her aware of the fact. All summer long in the mountains, everyone by tacit consent had made way for her, had deferred to her grief in the little things that make up the everyday life in a home. And to this precedent once established Edith now clung unawares.
Her new day gave her small time to think. It began at five in the morning, when Roger was awakened by the gleeful cries of the two wee boys who slept with their mother in the next room, the room which had been Deborah’s. And Edith was busy from that time on. First came the washing and dressing and breakfast, which was a merry, boisterous meal. Then the baby was taken out to his carriage on the porch at the back of the house. And after that, in her father’s study from which he had fled with his morning cigar, for two hours Edith held school for her children, trying her best to be patient and clear, with text-books she had purchased from their former schools uptown. For two severe hours, shutting the world all out of her head, she tried to teach them about it. At eleven, their nerves on edge like her own, she sent them outdoors “to play,” intrusting the small ones to Betsy and George, who took them to Washington Square nearby with strict injunctions to keep them away from all other children. No doubt there were “nice” children there, but she herself could not be along to distinguish the “nice” from the “common”—for until one o’clock she was busy at home, bathing the baby and making the beds, and then hurrying to the kitchen to pasteurize the baby’s milk and keep a vigilant oversight on the cooking of the midday meal. And the old cook’s growing resentment made it far from easy.
After luncheon, thank heaven, came their naps. And all afternoon, while again they went out, Edith would look over their wardrobes, mend and alter and patch and contrive how to make last winter’s clothes look new. At times she would drop her work in her lap and stare wretchedly before her. This was
what she had never known; this was what made life around her grim and hard, relentless, frightening; this was what it was to be poor. How it changed the whole city of New York. Behind it, the sinister cause of it all, she thought confusedly now and then of the Great Death across the sea, of the armies, smoking battle-fields, the shrieks of the dying, the villages blazing, the women and children flying away. But never for more than a moment. The war was so remote and dim. And soon she would turn back again to her own beloved children, whose lives, so full of happiness, so rich in promise hitherto, were now so cramped and thwarted. Each day was harder than the last. It was becoming unbearable!
No, they must go back to school. But how to manage it? How? How? It would cost eight hundred dollars, and this would take nearly all the money she would be able to secure by the sale of her few possessions. And then what? What of sickness, and the other contingencies which still lay ahead of her? How old her father seemed, these days! In his heavy shock of hair the flecks of white had doubled in size, were merging one into the other, and his tall, stooping, massive frame had lost its look of ruggedness. Suppose, suppose…. Her breath came fast. Was his life insured, she wondered.
On such afternoons, in the upstairs room as the dusk crept in and deepened, she would bend close to her sewing—planning, planning, planning. At last she would hear the children trooping merrily into the house. And making a very real effort, which at times was in truth heroic, to smile, she would rise and light the gas, would welcome them gaily and join in their chatter and bustle about on the countless tasks of washing them, getting their suppers, undressing the small ones and hearing their prayers. With smiling good-night kisses she would tuck her two babies into their cribs. Afterward, just for a moment or two, she would linger under the gas jet, her face still smiling, for a last look. A last good-night. Then darkness.
Darkness settling over her spirit, together with loneliness and fatigue. She would go into Betsy’s room and throw herself dressed on her daughter’s bed, and a dull complete indifference to everything under the moon and the stars would creep from her body up into her mind. At times she would try to fight it off. To-night at dinner she must not be what she knew she had been the night before, a wet blanket upon all the talk. But if they only knew how hard it was—what a perfect—hell it was! Her breath coming faster, she would dig her nails into the palms of her hands. One night she noticed and looked at her hand, and saw the skin was actually cut and a little blood was appearing. She had read of women doing this, but she had never done it before—not even when her babies were born. She had gripped Bruce’s hand instead.
CHAPTER XXVII
Roger found her like that one evening. He heard what he thought was a sob from the room, for she had forgotten to close the door. He came into the doorway but drew back, and closed the door with barely a sound. Frowning and irresolute, he stood for a moment in the hall, then turned and went into his room. Soon he heard Deborah enter the house and come slowly up the stairs. She too had had a hard day, he recalled, a day all filled with turbulence, with problems and with vexing toil, in her enormous family. And he felt he could not blame her for not being of more help at home. Still, he had been disappointed of late in her manner toward her sister. He had hoped she would draw closer to Edith, now that again they were living together in their old home where they had been born. But no, it had worked just the opposite way. They were getting upon each other’s nerves. Why couldn’t she make overtures, small kindly proffers of help and advice and sympathy, the womanly things?
From his room he heard her knock softly at the same door he had closed. And he heard her low clear voice:
“Are you there, Edith dear?” He listened a moment intently, but he could not hear the reply. Then Deborah said, “Oh, you poor thing. I’m awfully sorry. Edith—don’t bother to come downstairs—let me bring you up your supper.” A pause. “I wish you would. I’d love to.”
He heard Deborah come by his door and go up the second flight of stairs to the room she had taken on the third floor.
“I was wrong,” he reflected, “she has been trying—but it doesn’t do any good. Women simply haven’t it in ‘em to see each other’s point of view. Deborah doesn’t admire Edith—she can’t, she only pities her and puts her down as out of date. And Edith feels that, and it gets her riled, and she sets herself like an angry old hen against all Deborah’s new ideas. Why the devil can’t they live and let live?”
And he hesitated savagely between a pearl gray and a black cravat. Then he heard another step on the stairs. It was much slower than Deborah’s, and cautious and dogged, one foot lifted carefully after the other. It was John, who had finished his kitchen supper and was silently making his way up through the house to his room at the top, there to keep out of sight for the evening. And it came into Roger’s mind that John had been acting in just this fashion ever since Edith had been in the house.
“We’ll have trouble there, too!” he told himself, as he jerked the black satin cravat into place, a tie he thoroughly disliked. Yes, black, by George, he felt like it to-night! These women! These evenings! This worry! This war! This world gone raving, driveling mad!
And frowning with annoyance, Roger went down to his dinner.
As he waited he grew impatient. He had eaten no lunch, he was hungry; and he was very tired, too, for he had had his own hard day. Pshaw! He got up angrily. Somebody must be genial here. He went into the dining room and poured himself a good stiff drink. Roger had never been much of a drinker. Ever since his marriage, cigars had been his only vice. But of late he had been having curious little sinking spells. They worried him, and he told himself he could not afford to get either too tired or too faint.
Nevertheless, he reflected, it was setting a bad example for George. But glancing into his study he saw that the lad was completely absorbed. With knees drawn up, his long lank form all hunched and huddled on the lounge, hair rumpled, George was reading a book which had a cover of tough gray cloth. At the sight of it his grandfather smiled, for he had seen it once before. Where George had obtained it, the Lord only knew. Its title was “Bulls and Breeding.” A thoroughly practical little book, but nothing for George’s mother to see. As his grandfather entered behind him, the boy looked up with a guilty start, and resumed with a short breath of relief.
Young Elizabeth, too, had a furtive air, for instead of preparing her history lesson she was deep in the evening paper reading about the war abroad. Stout and florid, rather plain, but with a frank, attractive face and honest, clear, appealing eyes, this curious creature of thirteen was sitting firmly in her chair with her feet planted wide apart, eagerly scanning an account of the work of American surgeons in France. And again Roger smiled to himself. (He was feeling so much better now.) So Betsy was still thinking of becoming a surgeon. He wondered what she would take up next. In the past two years in swift succession she had made up her mind to be a novelist, an actress and a women’s college president. And Roger liked this tremendously.
He loved to watch these two in the house. Here again his family was widening out before him, with new figures arising to draw his attention this way and that. But these were bright distractions. He took a deep, amused delight in watching these two youngsters caught between two fires, on the one side their mother and upon the other their aunt; both obviously drawn toward Deborah, a figure who stood in their regard for all that thrilling outside world, that heaving sparkling ocean on which they too would soon embark; both sternly repressing their eagerness as an insult to their mother, whom they loved and pitied so, regarding her as a brave and dear but rapidly ageing creature “well on in her thirties,” whom they must cherish and preserve. They both had such solemn thoughts as they looked at Edith in her chair. But as Roger watched them, with their love and their solemnity, their guilt and their perplexity, with quiet enjoyment he would wait to see the change he knew would come. And it always did. The sudden picking up of a book, the vanishing of an anxious frown, and in an instant their young minds had turned
happily back into themselves, into their own engrossing lives, their plans, their intimate dreams and ambitions, all so curiously bound up with memories of small happenings which had struck them as funny that day and at which they would suddenly chuckle aloud.
And this was only one stage in their growth. What would be the next, he asked, and all the others after that? What kind of world would they live in? Please heaven, there would be no wars. Many old things, no doubt, would be changed, by the work of Deborah and her kind—but not too many, Roger hoped. And these young people, meanwhile, would be bringing up children in their turn. So the family would go on, and multiply and scatter wide, never to unite again. And he thought he could catch glimpses, very small and far away but bright as patches of sunlight upon distant mountain tops, into the widening vista of those many lives ahead. A wistful look crept over his face.
“In their lives too we shall be there, the dim strong figures of the past.”
* * * * *
Deborah came into the room, and at once the whole atmosphere changed. Her niece sprang up delightedly.
“Why, Auntie, how lovely you look!” she exclaimed. And Roger eyed Deborah in surprise. Though she did not believe in mourning, she had been wearing dark gowns of late to avoid hurting Edith’s feelings. But to-night she had donned bright colors instead; her dress was as near décolleté as anything that Deborah wore, and there was a band of dull blue velvet bound about her hair.
“Thanks, dearie,” she said, smiling. “Shall we go in to dinner now?” she added to her father. “Edith said not to wait for her—and I’ll have to be off rather early this evening.”