His Family (24 page)

"Not if you feel like that," he said. At his tone of displeasure she caught his hand.

"Yes, yes, I want to! Please!" she cried. "It's better--really! Believe me, it is--"

He hesitated a moment, his wide generous mouth set hard, and then in a tone as sharp as hers he demanded, "Are you sure you'll marry me next spring? Are you sure you
hope
you will next spring? Are you sure this sister of yours in the house, on your nerves day and night, with this blind narrow motherhood, this motherhood which frightens you--isn't frightening you too much?"

"No--a little--but not too much." Her deep sweet voice was trembling. "You're the one who frightens me. If you only knew! When you come like this--with all you've done for me back of you--"

"Deborah! Don't be a fool!"

"Oh, I know you say you've done nothing, except what you've been glad to do! You love me like that! But it's just that love! Giving up all your practice little by little, and your reputation uptown--all for the sake of me, Allan, me!"

"You're wrong," he replied. "Compared to what I'm getting, I've given up nothing! Can't you see? You're just as narrow in your school as Edith is right here in her home! You look upon my hospital as a mere annex to your schools, when the truth of it is that the work down there is a chance I've wanted all my life! Can't you understand," he cried, "that instead of your being in debt to me it's I who am in debt to you? You're a suffragist, eh, a feminist--whatever you want to call it! All right! So you want to be equal with man! Then, for God's sake, why not begin?
Feel
equal! I'm no annex to you, nor you to me! It has happened, thank God, that our work fits in--each with the other!"

He stopped and stared, seemed to shake himself; he walked the floor. And when he turned back his expression had changed.

"Look here, Deborah," he asked, with an appealing humorous smile, "will you tell me what I'm driving at?"

Deborah threw back her head and laughed, and her laughter thrilled with relief. "How sure I feel now that I love him," she thought.

"You've proved I owe you nothing!" she cried. "And that men and women of our kind can work on splendidly side by side, and never bother our poor little heads about anything else--even marriage!"

"We will, though!" he retorted. The next moment she was in his arms. "Now, Deborah, listen to reason, child. Why can't you marry me right away?"

"Because," she said, "when I marry you I'm going to have you all to myself--for weeks and weeks as we planned before! And afterwards, with a wonderful start--and with the war over, work less hard and the world less dark and gloomy--we're going to find that at last we can live! But this winter it couldn't be like that. This winter we've got to go on with our work--and without any more silly worries or talk about whether or not we're in love.
For we are
!" Her upturned face was close to his, and for some moments nothing was said, "Well?" she asked. "Are you satisfied?"

"No--I want to get married. But it is now a quarter past one. And I'm your physician. Go straight to bed."

She stopped him a minute at the front door:

"Are you sure, absolutely, you understand?"

He told her he did. But as he walked home he reflected. How tense she had been in the way she had talked. Yes, the long strain was telling. "Why was she so anxious to get me out of the house," he asked, "when we were alone for the first time in days? And why, if she's really sure of her love, does she hate the idea that she's in my debt?"

He walked faster, for the night was cold. And there was a chill, too, in this long waiting game.

* * * * *

Roger heard Deborah come up to bed, and he wondered what they had been talking about. Of the topic he himself had broached--each other, love and marriage?

"Possibly--for a minute or two--but no more," he grumbled. "For don't forget there's work to discuss, there's that mass meeting still on her mind. And God knows a woman's mind is never any child's play. But when you load a mass meeting on top--"

Here he yawned long and noisily. His head ached, he felt sore and weak--"from the evening's entertainment my other daughter gave me." No, he was through, he had had enough. They could settle things to suit themselves. Let Edith squander her money on frills, the more expensive the better. Let her turn poor Johnny out of the house, let her give full play to her motherhood. And if that scared Deborah out of marrying, let her stay single and die an old maid. He had worried enough for his family. He wanted a little peace in his house.

Drowsily he closed his eyes, and a picture came into his mind of the city as he had seen it only a few nights before. It had been so cool, so calm and still. At dusk he had been in the building of the great tower on Madison Square; and when he had finished his business there, on an impulse he had gone up to the top, and through a wide low window had stood a few moments looking down. A soft light snow was falling; and from high up in the storm, through the silent whirling flakes, he had looked far down upon lights below, in groups and clusters, dancing lines, between tall phantom buildings, blurred and ghostly, faint, unreal. From all that bustle and fever of life there had risen to him barely a sound. And the town had seemed small and lonely, a little glow in the infinite dark, fulfilling its allotted place for its moment in eternity. Suddenly from close over his head like a brazen voice out of the sky, hard and deafening and clear, the great bell had boomed the hour. Then again had come the silence, and the cool, soft, whirling snow.

Like a dream it faded all away, and with a curious smile on his face presently Roger fell asleep.

CHAPTER XXX

And now he felt the approach at last of another season of quiet, one of those uneventful times which come in family histories. As he washed and dressed for dinner, one night a little later, he thought with satisfaction, "How nicely things are smoothing out." His dressing for dinner, as a rule, consisted in changing his low wing collar and his large round detachable cuffs; but to-night he changed his cravat as well, from a black to a pearl gray one. He hoped the whole winter would be pearl gray.

The little storm which Edith had raised over John's presence in the house had been allayed. Deborah had talked to John, and had moved him with his belongings to a comfortable sunny room in the small but neat apartment of a Scotch family nearby. And John had been so sensible. "Oh, I'm fine, thank you," he had answered simply, when in the office Roger had asked him about his new home. So that incident was closed. Already Edith was disinfecting John's old room to her heart's content, for George was to occupy it now. She was having the woodwork repainted and a new paper put on the walls. She had already purchased a small new rug, and a bed and a bureau and one easy chair, and was making a pair of fresh pretty curtains. All right, let her do it--if only there could be peace in the house.

With his cravat adjusted and his thick-curling silver hair trim from having just been cut by "Louis" over at the Brevoort, Roger went comfortably down to his dinner. Edith greeted him with a smile.

"Deborah's dining out," she said.

"Very well," he replied, "so much the better. We'll go right in--I'm hungry. And we'll have the evening to ourselves. No big ideas nor problems. Eh, daughter?" He slipped his hand in hers, and she gave it a little affectionate squeeze. With John safely out of the way, and not only the health of her children but their proper schooling assured, Edith was herself again, placid, sweet and kindly. And dinner that night was a cheerful meal. Later, in the living room, as Roger contentedly lit his cigar, Edith gave an appreciative sniff.

"You do smoke such good cigars, father," she said, smiling over her needle. And glancing up at her daughter, "Betsy, dear," she added, "go and get your grandfather's evening paper."

In quiet perusal of the news he spent the first part of his evening. The war did not bother him to-night, for there had come a lull in the fighting, as though even war could know its place. And times were better over here. As, skipping all news from abroad his eye roved over the pages for what his business depended upon, Roger began to find it now. The old familiar headliness were reappearing side by side--high finance exposures, graft, the antics and didos cut up by the sons and daughters of big millionaires; and after them in cheery succession the Yale-Harvard game, a new man for the Giants, a new college building for Cornell, a new city plan for Seattle, a woman senator in Arizona and in Chicago a "sporting mayor." In brief, all over the U.S.A., men and women old and new had risen up, to power, fame, notoriety, whatever you chose to call it. Men and women? Hardly. "Children" was the better word. But the thought did not trouble Roger to-night. He had instead a heartening sense of the youth, the wild exuberance, the boundless vigor in his native land. He could feel it rising once again. Life was soon to go on as before; people were growing hungry to see the names of their countrymen back in the headlines where they belonged. And Roger's business was picking up. He was not sure of the figure of his deficit last week--he had always been vague on the book-keeping side--but he knew it was down considerably.

When Betsy and George had gone to bed, Roger put down his paper.

"Look here, Edith," he proposed, "how'd you like me to read aloud while you sew?" She looked up with a smile of pleased surprise.

"Why, father dear, I'd love it." At once, she bent over her needle again, so that if there were any awkwardness attending this small change in their lives it did not reveal itself in her pretty countenance. "What shall we read?" she affably asked.

"I've got a capital book," he replied. "It's about travel in Japan."

"I'd like nothing better," Edith replied. And with a slight glow of pride in himself Roger took his book in hand. The experiment was a decided success. He read again the next night and the next, while Edith sat at her sewing. And so this hour's companionship, from nine to ten in the evening, became a regular custom--just one hour and no more, which Roger spent with his daughter, intimately and pleasantly. Yes, life was certainly smoothing out.

Edith's three older children had been reinstated in school. And although at first, when deprived of their aid, she had found it nearly impossible to keep her two small boys amused and give them besides the four hours a day of fresh air they required, she had soon met this trouble by the same simple process as before. Of her few possessions still unsold, she had disposed of nearly all, and with a small fund thus secured she had sent for Hannah to return. The house was running beautifully.

Christmas, too, was drawing near. And though Roger knew that in Edith's heart was a cold dread of this season, she bravely kept it to herself; and she set about so determinedly to make a merry holiday, that her father admiring her pluck drew closer still to his daughter. He entered into her Christmas plans and into all the conspiracies which were whispered about the house. Great secrets, anxious consultations, found in him a ready listener.

So passed three blessed quiet weeks, and he had high hopes for the winter.

CHAPTER XXXI

If there were any cloud upon his horizon, it was the thought of Laura. She had barely been to the house since Edith had come back to town; and at times, especially in the days when things had looked dark for Roger, he had caught himself reproaching this giddy-gaddy youngest child, so engrossed in her small "ménage" that apparently she could not spare a thought for her widowed sister. Laura on her return from abroad had brought as a gift for Edith a mourning gown from Paris, a most alluring creation--so much so, in fact, that Edith had felt it simply indecent, insulting, and had returned it to her sister with a stilted note of thanks. But Roger did not know of this. There were so many ways, he thought, in which Laura might have been nice to Edith. She had a gorgeous limousine in which she might so easily have come and taken her sister off on little trips uptown. But no, she kept her car to herself. And from her small apartment, where a maid whom she had brought from Rome dressed her several times each day, that limousine rushed her noiselessly forth, gay and wild as ever, immaculate and elegant, radiant and very rich. To what places did she go? What new friends was she making? What was Laura up to?

He did not like her manner, one evening when she came to the house. As he helped her off with her cloak, a sleek supple leopard skin which fitted her figure like a glove, he asked,

"Where's Hal this evening?" And she answered lightly,

"Oh, don't ask
me
what he does with himself."

"You mean, I suppose," said Edith, with quiet disapproval, "that he is rushed to death this year with all this business from the war."

"Yes, it's business," Laura replied, as she deftly smoothed and patted her soft, abundant, reddish hair. "And it's war, too," she added.

"What do you mean?" her father asked. He knew what she meant, war with her husband. But before Laura could answer him, Edith cut in hastily, for two of her children were present. At dinner she turned the talk to the war. But even on this topic, Laura's remarks were disturbing. She did not consider the war wholly bad--by no means, it had many good points. It was clearing away a lot of old rubbish, customs, superstitions and institutions out of date. "Musty old relics," she called them. She spoke as though repeating what someone else had told her. Laura with her chicken's mind could never have thought it all out by herself. When asked what she meant, she was smilingly vague, with a glance at Edith's youngsters. But she threw out hints about the church and even Christianity, as though it were falling to pieces. She spoke of a second Renaissance, "a glorious pagan era" coming. And then she exploded a little bomb by inquiring of Edith.

"What do you think the girls over there are going to do for husbands, with half the marriageable men either killed or hopelessly damaged? They're not going to be nuns all their lives!"

Again her sister cut her off, and the rest of the brief evening was decidedly awkward. Yes, she was changing, growing fast. And Roger did not like it. Here she was spending money like water, absorbed in her pleasures, having no baby, apparently at loose ends with her husband, and through it all so cocksure of herself and her outrageous views about war, and smiling about them with such an air, and in her whole manner, such a tone of amused superiority. She talked about a world for the strong, bits of gabble from Nietzsche and that sort of rot; she spoke blithely of a Rome reborn, the "Wings of the Eagles" heard again. This part of it she had taken, no doubt, from her new Italian friend, her husband's shrapnel partner.