by Ernest Poole
But one morning, climbing the steep upper field to a spring George wanted to show him, Roger suddenly swayed, turned faint. He caught hold of a boulder on the wall and held himself rigid, breathing hard. It passed, and he looked at his grandson. But George had noticed nothing. The boy had turned and his brown eyes were fixed on a fallow field below. Wistfully Roger watched his face. They both stood motionless for a long time.
As the summer drew slowly to a close, Roger spent many quiet hours alone by the copse of birches, where the glory of autumn was already stealing in and out among the tall slender stems of the trees. And he thought of the silent winter there, and of the spring which would come again, and the long fragrant summer. And he watched the glow on the mountains above and the rolling splendors of the clouds. At dusk he heard the voices of animals, birds and insects, murmuring up from all the broad valley, then gradually sinking to deep repose, many never to wake again. And the span of his life, from the boyhood which he could recall so vividly here among these children, seemed brief to him as a summer’s day, only a part of a mighty whole made up of the innumerable lives, the many generations, of his family, his own flesh and blood, come out of a past he could never know, and going on without him now, branching, dividing, widening out to what his eyes would never see.
Vaguely he pictured them groping their way, just as he himself had done. It seemed to Roger that all his days he had been only entering life, as some rich bewildering thicket like this copse of birches here, never getting very deep, never seeing very clearly, never understanding all. And so it had been with his children, and so it was with these children of Edith’s, and so it would be with those many others—always groping, blundering, starting—children, only children all. And yet what lives they were to lead, what joys and revelations and disasters would be theirs, in the strange remote world they would live in—”my flesh and blood that I never shall know.”
But the stars were quiet and serene. The meadows and the forests on the broad sweep of the mountain side took on still brighter, warmer hues. And there was no gloom in these long good-byes.
* * * * *
On a frosty night in September, he left the farm to go to the city. From his seat in the small automobile Roger looked back at the pleasant old house with its brightly lighted windows, and then he turned to George by his side:
“We’re in good shape for the winter, son.”
But George did not get his full meaning.
At the little station, there were no other passengers. They walked the platform for some time. Then the train with a scream came around the curve. A quick grip on George’s hand, and Roger climbed into the car. Inside, a moment later, he looked out through the window. By a trainman with a lantern, George stood watching, smiling up, and he waved his hand as the train pulled out.
CHAPTER XXXIX
The next morning on his arrival in town, Roger went to his office. He had little cause for uneasiness there, for twice in the summer he had come down to keep an eye on the business, while John had taken brief vacations at a seaside place nearby. The boy had no color now in his cheeks; as always, they were a sallow gray with the skin drawn tight over high cheek bones; his vigor was all in his eyes. But here was a new John, nevertheless, a successful man of affairs. He had on a spruce new suit of brown, no cheap ready-made affair but one carefully fitted to conceal and soften his deformity. He was wearing a bright blue tie and a cornflower in his buttonhole, and his sandy hair was sleekly brushed. He showed Roger into his private room, a small place he had partitioned off, where over his desk was a motto in gold: “This is no place for your troubles or mine.”
“Lord, but you’ve got yourself fixed up fine in here,” said Roger. John smiled broadly. “And you’re looking like a new man, Johnny.”
“I had a great time at the seashore. Learned to sail a boat alone. What do you think of this chair of mine?” And John complacently displayed the ingenious contrivance in front of his desk, somewhat like a bicycle seat. It was made of steel and leather pads.
“Wonderful,” said Roger. “Where’d you ever pick it up?”
“I had it made,” was the grave reply. “When a fellow has got up in life enough to have a stenographer, it’s high time he was sitting down.”
“Let’s see you do it.” John sat down. “Now how is business?” Roger asked.
“Great. Since the little slump we had in August it has taken a new start—and not only war business, at that—the old people are sending in orders again. I tell you what it is, Mr. Gale, this country is right on the edge of a boom!”
And the junior member of the firm tilted triumphantly back in his chair.
With the solid comfort which comes to a man when he returns to find his affairs all going well, Roger worked on until five o’clock, and then he started for his home.
Deborah had not yet come in, and a deep silence reigned in the house. He looked through the rooms downstairs, and with content he noticed how little had been altered. His beloved study had not been touched. On the third floor, in the large back room, he found John comfortably installed. There were gay prints upon the walls, fresh curtains at the windows, a mandolin lying on a chair. And Roger, glancing down at the keen glad face of his partner, told himself that the doctor who had said this lad would die was a fool.
“These doctors fool themselves often,” he thought.
Deborah and Allan had the front room on the floor below. Roger went in, and for a moment he stood looking about him. How restful and how radiant was this large old-fashioned chamber, so softly lighted, waiting. Through a passageway lined with cupboards he went into his room at the back. Deborah had repapered it, but with a pattern so similar that Roger did not notice the change. He only felt a vague freshness here, as though even this old chamber, too, were making a new start in life. And he felt as though he were to live here for years. Slowly he unpacked his trunk and took a bath and dressed at his leisure. Then he heard Deborah’s voice at the door.
“Come in, come in!” he answered.
“Why, father! Dearie!” Deborah cried “Oh, how well you’re looking, dad!” And she kissed him happily. “Oh, but I’m glad to have you back—”
“That’s good,” he said, and he squeezed her hand “Here, come to the light, let me look at you.” He saw her cheeks a little flushed, the gladness in her steady eyes. “Happy? Everything just right?” His daughter nodded, smiling, and he gave a whimsical frown. “No ups and down at all? That’s bad.”
“Oh, yes, plenty—but all so small.”
“Good fellow to live with.”
“Very.”
“And your work?
“It’s going splendidly. I’ll tell you about it this evening, after you give me the news from the farm.”
They chatted on for a short while, but he saw she was barely listening.
“Can’t you guess what it means,” she asked him softly, “to a woman of my age—after she has been so afraid she was too old, that she’d married too late—to know at last—to be sure at last—that she’s to have a baby, dad?” He drew back a little, and a lump rose in his throat.
“By George!” he huskily exclaimed. “Oh, my dear, my dear!” And he held her close in his arms for some time, till both of them grew sensible.
Soon after she had gone to her room, he heard Allan coming upstairs. He heard her low sweet cry of welcome, a silence, then their voices. He heard them laughing together and later Deborah humming a song. And still thinking of what she had told him, he felt himself so close to it all. And again the feeling came to him that surely he would live here for years.
Allan came in and they had a talk.
“Deborah says she has told you the news.”
“Yes. Everything’s all right, I suppose—her condition, I mean,” said Roger.
“Couldn’t be better.”
“Just as I thought.”
“Those six weeks we had up in Maine—”
“Yes, you both show it. Working hard?”
�
��Yes—”
“And Deborah?” Roger asked.
“You’ll have to help me hold her in.”
They talked a few moments longer and went down to the living room. John was there with Deborah. All four went in to dinner. And through the conversation, from time to time Roger noticed the looks that went back and forth between husband and wife; and again he caught Deborah smiling as though oblivious of them all. After dinner she went with him into his den.
“Well! Do you like the house?” she inquired.
“Better than ever,” he replied.
“I wonder if you’ll mind it. There’ll be people coming to dinner, you know—”
“That won’t bother me any,” he said.
“And committee meetings now and then. But you’re safe in here, it’s a good thick door.”
“Let ‘em talk,” he retorted, “as hard as they please. You’re married now—they can’t scare me a bit. Only at ten o’clock, by George, you’ve got to knock off and go to bed.”
“Oh, I’ll take care of myself,” she said.
“If you don’t, Allan will. We’ve had a talk.”
“Scheming already.”
“Yes. When will it be?”
“In April, I think.”
“You’ll quit work in your schools?”
“A month before.”
“And in the meantime, not too hard.”
“No, and not too easy. I’m so sure now that I can do both.” And Deborah kissed him gently. “I’m so happy, dearie—and oh, so very glad you’re here!”
There followed for Roger, after that, many quiet evenings at home, untroubled days in his office. Seldom did he notice the progress of his ailment. His attention was upon his house, as this woman who mothered thousands of children worked on for her great family, putting all in order, making ready for the crisis ahead when she would become the mother of one.
Now even more than ever before, her work came crowding into his home. The house was old, but the house was new. For from schools and libraries, cafés and tenements and streets, the mighty formless hunger which had once so thrilled her father poured into the house itself and soon became a part of it. He felt the presence of the school. He heard the daily gossip of that bewildering system of which his daughter was a part: a world in itself, with its politics, its many jarring factions, its jealousies, dissensions, its varied personalities, ambitions and conspiracies; but in spite of these confusions its more progressive elements downing all distrusts and fears and drawing steadily closer to life, fearlessly rousing everywhere the hunger in people to live and learn and to take from this amazing world all the riches that it holds: the school with its great challenge steadily increasing its demands in the name of its children, demands which went deep down into conditions in the tenements and ramified through politics to the City Hall, to Albany, and even away to Washington—while day by day and week by week, from cities, towns and villages came the vast prophetic story of the free public schools of the land.
And meanwhile, in the tenements, still groping and testing, feeling her way, keeping close watch on her great brood, their wakening desires, their widening curiosities, Deborah was bringing them, children, mothers and fathers too, together through the one big hope of brighter and more ample lives for everybody’s children. Step by step this hope was spread out into the surrounding swamps and jungles of blind driven lives, to find surprising treasures there deep buried under dirt and din, locked in the common heart of mankind—old songs and fables, hopes and dreams and visions of immortal light, handed down from father to son, nurtured, guarded, breathed upon and clothed anew by countless generations, innumerable millions of simple men and women blindly struggling toward the sun. Over the door of one of the schools, were these words carved in the stone:
“Humanity is still a child. Our parents are all people who have lived upon the earth—our children, all who are to come. And the dawn at last is breaking. The great day has just begun.”
This spirit of triumphal life poured deep into Roger’s house. It was as though his daughter, in these last months which she had left for undivided service, were strengthening her faith in it all and pledging her devotion—as communing with herself she felt the crisis drawing near.
CHAPTER XL
There came an interruption. One night when Deborah was out and Roger sat in his study alone, the maid came in highly flustered and said,
“Mr. Gale! It’s Miss Laura to see you!”
He turned with a startled jerk of his head and his face slowly reddened. But when he saw the maid’s eager expression and saw that she was expecting a scene, with a frown of displeasure he rose from his chair.
“Very well,” he said, and he went to his daughter. He found her in the living room. No repentant Magdalene, but quite unabashed and at her ease, she came to her father quickly.
“Oh, dad, I’m so glad to see you, dear!” And she gave him a swift impetuous kiss, her rich lips for an instant pressing warmly to his cheek.
“Laura!” he said thickly. “Come into my study, will you? I’m alone this evening.”
“I’m so glad you are!” she replied. She followed him in and he closed the door. He glanced at her confusedly. In her warmth, her elegance, an indefinable change in the tone and accent of her high magnetic voice, and in her ardent smiling eyes, she seemed to him more the foreigner now. And Roger’s thoughts were in a whirl. What had happened? Had she married again?
“Is Edith here still?” she was asking.
“No, she’s up in the mountains. She’s living there,” he answered.
“Edith? In the mountains?” demanded Laura, in surprise. And she asked innumerable questions. He replied to each one of them carefully, slowly, meanwhile getting control of himself.
“And Deborah married—married at last! How has it worked? Is she happy, dad?”
“Very,” he said.
“And is she still keeping up her schools?”
“Yes, for the present. She’ll have to stop soon.” Laura leaned forward, curious:
“Tell me, dad—a baby?”
“Yes.” She stared a moment.
“Deborah!” she softly exclaimed; and in a moment, “I wonder.”
“What do you mean?” her father asked, but Laura evaded his question. She plied him with her inquiries for a few minutes longer, then turned to him with a challenging smile:
“Well, father, don’t you think you had better ask me now about myself?” He looked away a moment, but turned resolutely back:
“I suppose so. When did you land?”
“This morning, dear, from Italy—with my husband,” she replied. And Roger started slightly. “I want you to meet him soon,” she said.
“Very well,” he answered. At his disturbed, almost guilty expression Laura laughed a little and rose and came over and hugged him tight.
“Oh, but, father dearest—it’s working out so splendidly! I want you to know him and see for yourself! We’ve come to live in New York for a while—he has more to do here about war supplies.”
“More shrapnel, eh, machine guns. More wholesale death,” her father growled. But Laura smiled good-naturedly.
“Yes, love, from America. Aren’t you all ashamed of yourselves—scrambling so, to get rich quick—out of this war you disapprove of.”
”You look a bit rich,” her father retorted.
“Rather—for the moment,” was her cheerful answer.
“And you still like living in Italy?”
“Tremendously! Rome is wonderful now!”
“Reborn, eh. Wings of the Eagles.”
“Yes, and we’re doing rather well.”
“I haven’t noticed it,” Roger said. “Why don’t you send a few of your troops to help those plucky Frenchmen?”
“Because,” she replied, “we have a feeling that this is a war where we had much better help ourselves.”
“High ideals,” he snorted.
“Rome reborn,” she remarked, unabashed. And her father
scowled at her whimsically.
“You’re a heathen. I give you up,” he declared. Laura had risen, smiling.
“Oh, no, don’t give me up,” she said. “For you see,” she added softly, “I’m a heathen with a great deal of love in her heart for thee, my dearest dad. May I bring him down, my husband?”
“Yes—”
“I’ll telephone to Deborah to-morrow and arrange it.”
When she had gone he returned to his chair and sat for a long time in a daze. He was still disturbed and bewildered. What a daughter of his! And what did it mean? Could she really go on being happy like this? Sinning? Yes, she was sinning! Laura had broken her marriage vows, she had “run off with another fellah.” Those were the plain ugly facts. And now, divorced and re-married, she was careering gayly on! And her views of the war were plain heathenish! And yet there was something about her—yes, he thought, he loved her still! What for? For being so happy! And yet she was wrong to be happy, all wrong! His thoughts went ‘round in circles.
And his confusion and dismay grew even deeper the next night when Laura brought her new husband to dine. For in place of the dark polished scoundrel whom Roger had expected, here was a spruce and affable youth with thick light hair and ruddy cheeks, a brisk pleasant manner of talking and a decidedly forcible way of putting the case of his country at war. They kept the conversation to that. For despite Deborah’s friendly air, she showed plainly that she wanted to keep the talk impersonal. And Laura, rather amused at this, replied by treating Deborah and Allan and her father, too, with a bantering forbearance for their old-fashioned, narrow views and Deborah’s religion of brotherhood, democracy. All that to Laura was passé.
From time to time Roger glanced at her face, into her clear and luminous eyes so warm with the joy of living with this new man, her second. How his family had split apart. He wrote Edith the news of her sister, and he received but a brief reply. Nor did Deborah speak of it often. She seemed to want to forget Laura’s life as the crisis in her own drew near.
CHAPTER XLI
Deborah had not yet stopped work. Again and again she put it off. For in her busy office so many demands both old and new kept pressing in upon her, such unexpected questions and vexing little problems kept cropping up as Deborah tried to arrange her work for the colleague who was to take her place in the spring, that day after day she lingered there—until one afternoon in March her husband went to her office, gave her an hour to finish up, and then brought her home with him. She had a fit of the blues that night. Allan was called out on a case, and a little while later Roger found his daughter alone in the living room, a book unopened in her lap, her gray eyes glistening with tears. She smiled when she caught sight of him.