His Family (27 page)

Days passed. Christmas came at last, and despite Edith's glum resolution to make it a happy time for the children, the happiness soon petered out. After the tree in the morning, the day hung heavy on the house. Roger buried himself in his study. Laura had motored off into the country with a gay party of her friends. Or was this just a ruse, he wondered, and was she spending the day with her lover? Well, what if she was? Could he lock her in?

About twilight he thought he heard her return, and later from his bedroom he heard her voice and Edith's. Both voices sounded angry, but he would not interfere.

At the Christmas dinner that evening Laura did not put in an appearance, but Edith sat stiff and silent there; and despite the obvious efforts which Deborah and Allan made to be genial with the children, the very air in the room was charged with the feeling of trouble close ahead. Again Roger retreated into his den, and presently Laura came to him.

"Good-night--I'm going out," she said, and she pressed her cheek lightly to his own. "What a dear you've been to me, dad," she murmured. And then she was gone.

A few minutes later Edith came in. She held a small note in her hand, which Roger saw was addressed to himself.

"Well, father, I learned this afternoon what you've been keeping from me," she said. Roger gave her a steady look.

"You did, eh--Laura told you?"

"Yes, she did!" his daughter exclaimed. "And I can't help wondering, father--"

"Why did she tell you? Have you been at her again to-day?"

"Again? Not at all," she answered. "I've done as you asked me to, let her alone. But to-day--mother's day--I got thinking of
her
."

"Leave your mother out of it, please. What did you say to Laura?"

"I tried to make her go back, of course--"

"And she told you--"

"He wouldn't have her! And then in a perfect tantrum she went on to tell me why!" Edith's eyes were cold with disgust. "And I'm wondering why you let her stay here--in the same house with my children!"

Roger reached out his hand.

"Give me that note," he commanded. He read it quickly and handed it back. The note was from Laura, a hasty good-bye.

"Edith will explain," she wrote, "and you will see I cannot stay any longer. It is simply too impossible. I am going to the man I love--and in a few days we shall sail for Naples. I know you will not interfere. It will make the divorce even simpler and everything easier all round. Please don't worry about me. We shall soon be married over there. You have been so dear and sensible and I do so love you for it." Then came her name scrawled hastily. And at the bottom of the page: "I have paid every bill I can think of."

Edith read it in silence, her color slowly mounting.

"All right," said her father, "your children are safe." She gave him a quick angry look, burst into tears and ran out of the room.

Roger sat without moving, his heavy face impassive. And so he remained for a long time. Well,
Laura
was gone--no mistake about that--and this time she was gone for good. She was going to live in Rome. Try to stop her? No. What good would it do? Wings of the Eagles, Rome reborn. That was it, she had hit it, struck the keynote of this new age. Rome reborn, all clean, old-fashioned Christian living swept away by millions of men at each others' throats like so many wolves. And at last quite openly to himself Roger admitted that he felt old. Old and beaten, out of date. Moments passed, and hours--he took little note of time. Nor did he see on the mantle the dark visage of "The Thinker" there, resting on the huge clinched fist and brooding down upon him. Lower, imperceptibly, he sank into his leather chair.

Quiet had returned to his house.

CHAPTER XXXIV

But the quiet was dark to Roger now. Each night he spent in his study alone, for instinctively he felt the need of being by himself for a while, of keeping away from his children--out of whose lives he divined that other events would soon come forth to use up the last of the strength that was in him.

And Roger grew angry with the world. Why couldn't it let a man alone, an old man in a silent house alive for him with memories? Repeatedly in such hours his mind would go groping backward into the years behind him. What a long and winding road, half buried in the jungle, dim, almost impenetrable, made up of millions of small events, small worries, plans and dazzling dreams, with which his days had all been filled. But the more he recalled the more certain he grew that he was right. Life had never been like this: the world had never come smashing into his house, his very family, with its dirty teeming tenements, its schools, its prisons, electric chairs, its feverish rush for money, its luxuries, its scandals. These things had existed in the world, but remote and never real, mere things which he had read about. War? Did he not remember wars that had come and gone in Europe? But they hadn't come into his home like this, first making him poor when he needed money for Edith and her children, then plunging Deborah into a struggle which might very probably ruin her life, and now taking Laura and filling her mind with thoughts of pagan living. Why was every man, woman and child, these days, bound up in the whole life of the world? What would come of it all? A new day out of this deafening night? Maybe so. But for him it would come too late.

"What have I left to live for?"

One night with a sigh he went to his desk, lit a cigar and laid his hand upon a pile of letters which had been mounting steadily. It was made up of Laura's bills, the ones she had not remembered. Send them after her to Rome for that Italian fellow to pay? No, it could not be thought of. Roger turned to his dwindling bank account. He was not yet making money, he was still losing a little each week. But he would not cut expenses. To the few who were left in his employ, to be turned away would mean dire need. And angrily he determined that they should not starve to pay Laura's bills. "The world for the strong, eh? Not in my office!" In Rome or Berlin or Vienna, all right! But not over here!

Grimly, when he had made out the checks, Roger eyed his balance. By spring he would be penniless. And he had no one to turn to now, no rich young son-in-law who could aid.

He set himself doggedly to the task of forcing up his business, and meanwhile in the evenings he tried with Edith to get back upon their former footing. To do this was not easy at first, for his bitterness still rankled deep: "When you were in trouble I took you in, but when she was in trouble you turned her out, as you turned out John before her." In the room again vacated, young George had been reinstalled. One night Edith found her father there looking in through the open doorway, and the look on his massive face was hard.

"Better have the room disinfected again," he muttered when he saw her. He turned and went slowly down the stairs. And she was late for dinner that night.

But Edith had her children. And as he watched her night by night hearing their lessons patiently, reading them fairy stories and holding them smilingly in her arms, the old appeal of her motherhood regained its hold upon him. One evening when the clock struck nine, putting down his paper he suggested gruffly,

"Well, daughter, how about some chess?"

Edith flushed a little:

"Why, yes, dear, I'd be glad to."

She rose and went to get the board. So the games were resumed, and part at least of their old affection came to life. But only a part. It could never be quite the same again.

And though he saw little of Deborah, slowly, almost unawares to them both, she assumed the old place she had had in his home--as the one who had been right here in the house through all the years since her mother had died, the one who had helped and never asked help, keeping her own troubles to herself. He fell back into his habit of going before dinner to his daughter's bedroom door to ask whether she would be home that night. At one such time, getting no response and thinking Deborah was not there, he opened the door part way to make sure. And he saw her at her dresser, staring at herself in the glass, rigid as though in a trance. Later in the dining room he heard her step upon the stairs. She came in quietly and sat down; and as soon as dinner was over, she said her good-nights and left the house. But when she came home at midnight, he was waiting up for her. He had foraged in the kitchen, and on his study table he had set out some supper. While she sat there eating, her father watched her from his chair.

"Things going badly in school?" he inquired.

"Yes," she replied. There was silence.

"What's wrong?"

"To-night we had a line of mothers reaching out into the street. They had come for food and coal--but we had to send most of them home empty-handed. Some of them cried--and one of them fainted. She's to have a baby soon."

"Can't you get any money uptown?" he asked.

"I have," she answered grimly. "I've been a beggar--heaven knows--on every friend I can think of. And I've kept a press agent hard at work trying to make the public see that Belgium is right here in New York." She stopped and went on with her supper. "But it's a bad time for work like mine," she continued presently. "If we're to keep it going we must above all keep it cheap. That's the keynote these days, keep everything cheap--at any cost--so that men can expensively kill one another." Her voice had a bitter ring to it. "You try to talk peace and they bowl you over, with facts on the need of preparedness--for the defence of your country. And that doesn't appeal to me very much. I want a bigger preparedness--for the defence of the whole world--for democracy, and human rights, no matter who the people are! I'd like to train every child to that!"

"What do you mean?" her father asked.

"To teach him what his life can be!" she replied in a hard quivering tone. "A fight? Oh yes! So long as he lives--and even with guns if it must be so! But a fight for all the people on earth!--and a world so full of happy lives that men will think hard--before ever again letting themselves be led by the nose--into war and death--for a place in the sun!" She rose from her chair, with a weary smile: "Here I am making a speech again. I've made so many lately it's become a habit. I'm tired out, dad, I'm going to bed." Her father looked at her anxiously.

"You're seeing things out of proportion," he said. "You've worked so hard you're getting stale. You ought to get out of it for a while."

"I can't!" she answered sharply. "You don't know--you don't even guess--how it takes every hour--all the demands!"

"Where's Allan these days?"

"Working," was her harsh reply. "Trying to keep his hospital going with half its staff. The woman who was backing him is giving her money to Belgium instead."

"Do you see much of him?"

"Every day. Let's drop it. Shall we?"

"All right, my dear--"

And they said good-night ...

* * * * *

In the meantime, in the house, Edith had tried to scrimp and save, but it was very difficult. Her children had so many needs, they were all growing up so fast. Each month brought fresh demands on her purse, and the fund from the sale of her belongings had been used up long ago. Her sole resource was the modest allowance her father gave her for running the house, and she had not asked him for more. She had put off trouble from month to month. But one evening early in March, when he gave her the regular monthly check, she said hesitatingly:

"I'm very sorry, father dear, but I'm afraid we'll need more money this month." He glanced up from his paper:

"What's the matter?" She gave him a forced little smile, and her father noticed the gray in her hair.

"Oh, nothing in particular. Goodness knows I've tried to keep down expenses, but--well, we're a pretty large household, you know--"

"Yes," said Roger kindly, "I know. Are the month's bills in?"

"Yes."

"Let me see them." She brought him the bills and he looked relieved. "Not so many," he ventured.

"No, but they're large."

"Why, look here, Edith," he said abruptly, "these are bills for two months--some for three, even four!"

"I know--that's just the trouble. I couldn't meet them at the time."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Laura was here--and I didn't want to bother you--you had enough on your mind as it was. I've done the best I could, father dear--I've sold everything, you know--but I've about come to the end of my rope." And her manner said clearly, "I've done my part. I'm only a woman. I'll have to leave the rest to you."

"I see--I see." And Roger knitted his heavy brows. "I presume I can get it somehow." This would play the very devil with things!

"Father." Edith's voice was low. "Why don't you let Deborah help you? She does very little, it seems to me--compared to the size of her salary."

"She can't do any more than she's doing now," was his decisive answer. Edith looked at him, her color high. She hesitated, then burst out:

"I saw her check book the other day, she had left it on the table! She's spending thousands--every month!"

"That's not her own money," Roger said.

"No--it's money she gets for her fads--her work for those tenement children! She can get money enough for _them!_" He flung out his hand:

"Leave her out of this, please!"

"Very well, father, just as you say." And she sat there hurt and silent while again he looked slowly through the bills. He jotted down figures and added them up. They came to a bit over nine hundred dollars. Soon Deborah's key was heard in the door, and Roger scowled the deeper. She came into the room, but he did not look up. He heard her voice:

"What's the matter, Edith?"

"Bills for the house."

"Oh." And Deborah came to her father. "May I see what's the trouble, dear?"

"I'd rather you wouldn't. It's nothing," he growled. He wanted her to keep out of this.

"Why shouldn't she see?" Edith tartly inquired. "Deborah is living here--and before I came she ran the house. In her place I should certainly want to know."

Deborah was already glancing rapidly over the bills.

"Why, Edith," she exclaimed, "most of these bills go back for months. Why didn't you pay them when they were due?"