His Family (33 page)

"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.

"It's so silly!" she muttered unsteadily. "Just my condition, I suppose. I feel as though I had done with school for the remainder of my days!... Better leave me now, dearie," she added. "I'm not very proud of myself to-night--but I'll be all right in the morning."

The next day she was herself again, and went quietly on with her preparations for the coming of her child. But still the ceaseless interests of those hordes of other children followed her into the house. Not only her successor but principals and teachers came for counsel or assistance. And later, when reluctantly she refused to see such visitors, still the telephone kept ringing and letters poured in by every mail. For in her larger family there were weddings, births and deaths, and the endless savage struggle for life; and there were many climaxes of dreams and aspirations, of loves and bitter jealousies. And out of all this straining and this fever of humanity, came messages to Deborah: last appeals for aid and advice, and gifts for the child who was to be born; tiny garments quaintly made by women and girls from Italy, from Russia and from Poland; baby blankets, wraps and toys and curious charms and amulets. There were so many of these gifts.

"There's enough for forty babies," Deborah told her father. "What on earth am I to do, to avoid hurting anyone's feelings? And isn't it rather awful, the way these inequalities will crop up in spite of you? I know of eight tenement babies born down there in this one week. How much fuss and feathers is made over them, and their coming into the world, poor mites?" Roger smiled at his daughter.

"You remind me of Jekyll and Hyde," he said.

"Father! What a horrible thought! What have Jekyll and Hyde to do with me?"

"Nothing, my dear," he answered. "Only it's queer and a little uncanny, something I've never seen before, this double mother life of yours."

* * * * *

It was only a few days later when coming home one evening he found that Deborah's doctor had put her to bed and installed a nurse. There followed a week of keen suspense when Roger stayed home from the office. She liked to have him with her, and sitting at her bedside he saw how changed his daughter was, how far in these few hours she had drawn into herself. He had suspected for some time that all was not well with Deborah, and Allan confirmed his suspicions. There was to be grave danger both for the mother and the child. It would come out all right, of course, he strove to reassure himself. Nothing else could happen now, with her life so splendidly settled at last. That Fate could be so pitiless--no, it was unthinkable!

"This is what comes of your modern woman!" Roger exclaimed to Allan one night. "This is the price she's paying for those nerve-racking years of work!"

The crisis came toward the end of the week. And while for one entire night and through the day that followed and far into the next night the doctors and nurses fought for life in the room upstairs, Roger waited, left to himself, sitting in his study or restlessly moving through the house. And still that thought was with him--the price! It was kept in his mind by the anxious demands which her big family made for news. The telephone kept ringing. Women in motors from uptown and humbler visitors young and old kept coming to make inquiries. More gifts were brought and flowers. And Roger saw these people, and as he answered their questions he fairly scowled in their faces--unconsciously, for his mind was not clear. Reporters came. Barely an hour passed without bringing a man or a woman from some one of the papers. He gave them only brief replies. Why couldn't they leave his house alone? He saw her name in headlines: "Deborah Gale at Point of Death." And he turned angrily away. Vividly, on the second night, there came to him a picture of Deborah's birth so long ago in this same house. How safe it had been, how different, how secluded and shut in. No world had clamored
then
for news. And so vivid did this picture grow, that when at last there came to his ears the shrill clear cry of a new life, it was some time before he could be sure whether this were not still his dream of that other night so long ago.

But now a nurse had led him upstairs, and he stood by a cradle looking down at a small wrinkled face almost wholly concealed by a soft woolly blanket. And presently Allan behind him said,

"It's a boy, and he's to be named after you." Roger looked up.

"How's the mother?" he asked.

"Almost out of danger," was the reply. Then Roger glanced at Allan's face and saw how drawn and gray it was. He drew a long breath and turned back to the child. Allan had gone and so had the nurse, and he was alone by the cradle. Relief and peace and happiness stole into his spirit. He felt the deep remoteness of this strange new little creature from all the clamoring world without--which he himself was soon to leave. The thought grew clearer, clearer, as with a curious steady smile Roger stood there looking down.