His Family (20 page)

"It has been a hard day, hasn't it. I've got your bath-room ready," she said. "Don't you want a nice cool bath? Supper will be ready soon."

When, a half hour later, somewhat refreshed, Roger came down to the table, he noticed it was set for two.

"Isn't Allan coming?" he asked. Her mobile features tightened.

"Not till later," she replied.

They talked little and the meal was short. But afterwards, on the wooden porch, Deborah turned to her father,

"Now tell me about your office," she said.

"There's not enough business to pay the rent."

"That won't last--"

"I'm not so sure."

"I am," she said determinedly. Her father slowly turned his head.

"Are you, with this war?" he asked. Her eyes met his and moved away in a baffled, searching manner. "She has troubles of her own," he thought.

"How much can we run the house on, Deborah?" he asked her. At first she did not answer. "What was it--about six thousand last year?"

"I think so," she said restlessly. "We can cut down on that, of course--"

"With Edith and the children here?"

"Edith will have to manage it! There are others to be thought of!"

"The children in your schools, you mean."

"Yes," she answered with a frown. "It will be a bad year for the tenements. But please go on and tell me. What have you thought of doing?"

"Mortgage the house again," he replied. "It hasn't been easy, for money is tight, but I think I'll be able to get enough to just about carry us through the year. At home, I mean," he added.

"And the office?"

"Shut down," he said. She turned on him fiercely.

"You won't do that!"

"What else can I do?"

"Turn all those girls away?" she cried. At her tone his look grew troubled.

"How can I help myself, Deborah? If I kept open it would cost me over five hundred a week to run. Have I five hundred dollars a week to lose?"

"But I tell you it won't last!" she cried, and again the baffled, driven expression swept over her expressive face. "Can't you see this is only a panic--and keep going somehow? Can't you see what it means to the tenements? Hundreds of thousands are out of work! They're being turned off every day, every hour--employers all over are losing their heads! And City Hall is as mad as the rest! They've decided already down there to retrench!"

He turned with a quick jerk of his head:

"Are they cutting you down?" She set her teeth:

"Yes, they are. But the work in my schools is going on--every bit of it is--for every child! I'm going to find a way," she said. And he felt a thrill of compassion.

"I'm sorry to hear it," he muttered.

"You needn't be." She paused a moment, smiled and went on in a quieter voice: "Don't think I'm blind--I'm sensible--I see you can't lose five hundred a week. But why not try what other employers, quite a few, have decided to do? Call your people together, explain how it is, and ask them to choose a committee to help you find which ones need jobs the most. Keep all you can--on part time, of course--but at least pay them something, carry them through. You'll lose money by it, I haven't a doubt. But you've already found you can mortgage the house, and remember besides that I shall be here. I'm not going to marry now"--her father looked at her quickly--"and of course I'll expect to do my share toward meeting the expenses. Moreover, I know we can cut down."

"Retrench," said Roger grimly. "Turn off the servants instead of the clerks."

"No, only one of them, Martha upstairs--and she is to be married. We'll keep the cook and the waitress. Edith will have to give up her nurse--and it will be hard on her, of course--but she'll have to realize this is war," Deborah said sharply. "Besides," she urged, "it's not going to last. Business everywhere will pick up--in a few weeks or months at most. The war _can't_ go on--it's too horribly big!" She broke off and anxiously looked at him. Her father was still frowning.

"I'm asking you to risk a good deal," she continued, her voice intense and low. "But somehow, dearie, I always feel that this old house of ours is strong. It can
stand
a good deal. We can all of us stand so much, as soon as we know we have to." The lines of her wide sensitive mouth tightened firmly once again. "It's all so vague and uncertain, I know. But one thing at least is sure. This is no time for people with money--no matter how little--to shut themselves up in their own little houses and let the rest starve or beg or steal. This is the time to do our share."

And she waited. But he made no reply.

"Every nation at war is doing it, dad--become like one big family--with everyone helping, doing his share. Must a nation be at war to do that? Can't we be brothers without the guns? Can't you see that we're all of us stunned, and trying to see what war will mean to all the children in the world? And while we're groping, groping, can't we give each other a hand?"

Still he sat motionless there in the dark. At last he stirred heavily in his chair.

"I guess you're right," he told her. "At least I'll think it over--and try to work out something along the lines you spoke of."

Again there was a silence. Then his daughter turned to him with a little deprecating smile.

"You'll forgive my--preaching to you, dad?"

"No preaching," he said gruffly. "Just ordinary common sense."

* * * * *

A little later Allan came in, and Roger soon left them and went to bed. Alone with Baird she was silent a moment.

"Well? Have you thought it over?" she asked. "Wasn't I right in what I said?" At the anxious ring in her low clear voice, leaning over he took her hand; and he felt it hot and trembling as it quickly closed on his. He stroked it slowly, soothingly. In the semi-darkness he seemed doubly tall and powerful.

"Yes, I'm sure you were right," he said.

"Spring at the latest--I'll marry you then--"

Her eyes were intently fixed on his.

"Come here!" she whispered sharply, and Baird bent over and held her tight. "Tighter!" she whispered. "Tighter!... There!... I said, spring at the latest! I can't lose you, Allan--now--"

She suddenly quivered as though from fatigue.

"I'm going to watch you close down there," he said in a moment, huskily.

CHAPTER XXV

Roger saw little of Deborah in the weeks that followed. She was gathering her forces for the long struggle she saw ahead. And his own worries filled his mind. On his house he succeeded in borrowing five thousand dollars at ten per cent, and in his office he worked out a scheme along the lines of Deborah's plan. At first it was only a struggle to save the remnants of what was left. Later the tide began to turn, new business came into the office again. But only a little, and then it stopped. Hard times were here for the winter.

Soon Edith would come with the children. He wondered how sensible she would be. It was going to mean a daily fight to make ends meet, he told himself, and guiltily he decided not to let his daughter know how matters stood in his office. Take care of your own flesh and blood, and then be generous as you please--that had always been his way. And now Deborah had upset it by her emotional appeal. "How dramatic she is at times!" he reflected in annoyance. "Just lets herself out and enjoys herself!" He grew angry at her interference, and more than once he resolved to shut down. But back in the office, before those watchful faces, still again he would put it off.

"Wait a little. We'll see," he thought.

* * * * *

In the meantime, in this interplay, these shifting lights and shadows which played upon the history of the life of Roger's home, there came to him a diversion from an unexpected source. Laura and Harold returned from abroad. Soon after landing they came to the house, and talking fast and eagerly they told how they had eluded the war.

For them it had been a glorious game. In Venice in early August, Harold had seen a chance for a big stroke of business. He had a friend who lived in Rome, an Italian close to his government. At once they had joined forces, worked day and night, pulled wires, used money judiciously here and there, and so had secured large orders for munitions from the U.S.A. Then to get back to God's country! There came the hitch, they were too late. Naples, Genoa, and Milan, all were filled with tourist mobs. They took a train for Paris, and reaching the city just a week before the end of the German drive they found it worse than Italy. But there Hal had a special pull--and by the use of those wits of his, not to be downed by refusals, he got passage at last for Laura, himself and his new Italian partner. At midnight, making their way across the panic-stricken city, and at the station struggling through a wild and half crazed multitude of men and women and children, they boarded a train and went rushing westward right along the edge of the storm. To the north the Germans were so close that Laura was sure she could hear the big guns. The train kept stopping to take on troops. At dawn some twenty wounded men came crowding into their very car, bloody and dirty, pale and worn, but gaily smiling at the pain, and saying, "Ça n'fait rien, madame." Later Harold opened his flask for some splendid Breton soldier boys just going into action. And they stood up with flashing eyes and shouted out the Marseillaise, while Laura shivered and thrilled with delight.

"I nearly kissed them all!" she cried.

Roger greatly enjoyed the evening. He had heard so much of the horrors of war. Here was something different, something bright and vibrant with youth and adventure! Here at last was the thrill of war, the part he had always read about!

He glanced now and then at Deborah and was annoyed by what he saw. For although she said nothing and forced a smile, he could easily tell by the set of her lips that Deborah thoroughly disapproved. All right, that was her way, he thought. But this was Laura's way, shedding the gloom and the tragic side as a duck will shed water off its back, a duck with bright new plumage fresh from the shops of the Rue de la Paix and taking some pleasure out of life! What an ardent gleaming beauty she was, he thought as he watched this daughter of his. And underneath his enjoyment, too, though Roger would not have admitted it, was a sense of relief in the news that at least one man in the family was growing rich instead of poor. Already Hal and his partner--a fascinating creature according to Laura's description--were fast equipping shrapnel mills. Plainly they expected a tremendous rush of business. And no matter how you felt about war, the word "profits" at least had a pleasant sound.

"How has the war hit you, sir?" Harold asked his father-in-law.

"Oh, so-so, I'll get on, my boy," was Roger's quiet answer. For Harold was not quite the kind he would ever like to ask for aid. Still, if the worst came to the worst, he would have someone to turn to.

* * * * *

Long after they had left the house, he kept thinking over all they had said. What an amazing time they had had, the two young scalawags.

Deborah was still in the room. As she sat working at her desk, her back was turned and she did not speak. But little by little her father's mood changed. Of course she was right, he admitted. For now they were gone, the spell they had cast was losing a part of its glamor. Yes, their talk had been pretty raw. Sheer unthinking selfishness, a bold rush for plunder and a dash to get away, trampling over people half crazed, women and children in panicky crowds, and leaving behind them, so to speak, Laura's joyous rippling laugh over their own success in the game. Yes, there was no denying the fact that Hal was rushing headlong into a savage dangerous game, a scramble and a gamble, with adventurers from all over Europe gathering here and making a little world of their own. He would work and live at a feverish pitch, and Laura would go it as hard as he. Roger thought he could see their winter ahead. How they would pile up money and spend!

All at once, as though some figure silent and invisible were standing close beside him, from far back in his childhood a memory flashed into his mind of a keen and clear October night, when Roger, a little shaver of nine, had stood with his mother in front of the farmhouse and listened to the faint sharp roll of a single drum far down in the valley. And his mother's grip had hurt his hand, and a lump had risen in his throat--as Dan, his oldest brother, had marched away with his company of New Hampshire mountain boys. "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more." Dan had been killed at Shiloh.

And it must be like that now in France. No, he did not like the look which he had seen on Laura's face as she had talked about the war and the fat profits to be made. Was this all we Yankees had to say to the people over in Europe?

Frowning and glancing at Deborah's back, he saw that she was tired. It was nearly midnight, but still she kept working doggedly on, moving her shoulder muscles at times as though to shake off aches and pains, then bending again to her labor, her fight against such heavy odds in the winter just beginning for those children in the tenements. He recalled a fragment of the appeal she had made to him only the month before:

"Can't you see that we're all of us stunned, and trying to see what war will mean to all the children in the world? And while we're groping, groping, can't we give each other a hand?"

And as he looked at his daughter, she made him think of her grandmother, as she had so often done before. For Deborah, too, was a pioneer. She, too, had lived in the wilderness. Clearing roads through jungles? Yes. And freeing slaves of ignorance and building a nation of new men. And now she was doggedly fighting to save what she had builded--not from the raids of the Indians but from the ravages of this war which was sweeping civilization aside. With her school behind her, so to speak, she stood facing this great enemy with stern and angry, steady eyes. Her pioneer grandmother come to life.

So, with the deep craving which was a part of his inmost self, Roger tried to bind together what was old and what was new. But his thoughts grew vague and drifting. He realized how weary he was, and said good-night and went to bed. There, just before he fell asleep, again he had a feeling of relief at the knowledge that one at least in the family was to be rich this year. With a guilty sensation he shook off the thought, and within a few moments after that his harsh regular breathing was heard in the room.