The Man Who Loved Children (23 page)

“I know,” said Louie.

“She told me she would kill you and bury you in ‘the grave’ in the orchard, not to get rid of you, so much as to go to jail and get away from me: she said she would welcome hanging to get away from me. Can you imagine what my life was, Looloo?” he asked in a tone of horror, far away from his daughter, in the grisly past. “Murder! And she used to threaten to write insulting letters to the women I knew, noble-minded women—she said she would poison me and herself. She said she hated my children—her own children, Looloo-dirl, her own children!”

“She tried to choke me,” said Louie sulkily.

Sam said, sharp as a whip, “What does this mean?”

“Last time when Tommy had convulsions, when I came in with the other blanket, I nearly fell into the bath of hot water, and Mother tried to choke me and then Tommy, and then she said she would drown us rather in the hot water and then she tried to choke herself.”

After a short pause, Sam abruptly told her not to be melodramatic, that she could defend herself against a weak woman like Henny, and her brother too, “Your mother is not strong.”

Louie sulked; then she said hotly, “You said it depends where it is whether it’s murder.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Polynesians don’t think it’s murder: you said so. Old women collect money, then they get a young man to murder them and bury them. You said so. You said, it doesn’t matter if the people in the country don’t mind it.”

His voice had cleared, “Oh! Yes, I did say that, Looloo, murder depends upon the meridian, so to speak: the thousand and one tables of morality (when we objectively consider the facts of ethnic mores), teach us not to be hidebound about our own particular little prejudices, even in law. Consider what is supposed to be a heinous offense, murder. Now, call it war, and it becomes a patriotic duty to urge other people to go and murder and be murdered. Foolish old Jo, who is a goodhearted woman, sent dozens of white feathers during the Late Unpleasantness or, in other words, desired young men to go and be murdered. En she could hev done with a young man herself: it was a combination of the sacred folly of race suicide, willful sterility, and murder. En ebblyone thought Jo was a big gun of patriotism: I bleeve your little foolish Aunt Jo will get herself ’lected to the D.A.R.’s yet—she’s bin and discovered a Pollit what had no more sense than to go and fight long time ago: ten to one he was a redcoat—oh, what a joke on Jo!”

“Mother said to ask you for some money for a new dress, Dad,” said Louie, after Sam had finished laughing. Sam chuckled again. “This one is all spots,” said Louie.

“Now, wimmin is prone to murder,” said Sam. “In wicked old Europe still, you get the village witch planning to murder husbings for them wives what is a bit tired of making coffee for the old man.”

“Do they?” asked Louie, entranced.

“Yiss, and fum what I know of some wimminfolk what I know,” continued Sam chuckling, “they would very much like to get to know them there witches. En some husbings too would like to know such witches.” Louie giggled. “We could get rid of our old wives which is always mad at us and we could get sweet little beauts what is seventeen years old,” said Sam. Louie giggled.

Louie and Sam chattered for a while on this interesting subject of countenanced murder, and then Sam told Louie that they must be serious, for murder was really a serious thing, because it meant hate, and hate produced all the wickedness of the world.

“If your own dear mother had lived, for example, my life would have been fulfilled and it would have been a paradise for me. I would not have minded if her mind had not developed, if she had just remained my own dear wife, for I should have been heartened to go on. Your dear mother understood my aims—or, let us say, she understood me and urged me on, in everything. She was anxious for me to study and get on, not for vulgar success, but because she was a true woman whose home was dear to her and because I was dear to her and you too, little Ducky she called you, and then because she knew of ray high ambitions, through my so often having told them to her.”

“What was your ambition?” asked Louie, full of interest. She too was very ambitious. She wished to be a Spartan, for example: if she could go to the dentist and never make a squeak, she felt she would make a great impression. Then she wished to become great. At present she only read about men of destiny.

“You know it, Looloo,” he replied in a deep voice. “It is to be of those who spread the light, the children of light.”

On the way back, he was soulfully happy. To amuse her he told her some more about permitted murder, for he could see it amused her. In some secret societies, it was understood that a traitor would be murdered by a member of the society: this was the understanding on which he entered the fraternity. Suicide ought to be recognized and permitted, for a person was captain of his own life. Murder of the unfit, incurable, and insane should be permitted. Children born mentally deficient or diseased should be murdered, and none of these murders would really be a crime, for the community was benefited, and the good of the whole was the aim of all, or should be.

“Murder might be beautiful, a self-sacrifice, a sacrifice of someone near and dear, for the good of others—I can conceive of such a thing, Looloo! The extinction of one life, when many are threatened, or when future generations might suffer—wouldn’t you, even you, think that a fine thing? Why, we might murder thousands—not indiscriminately as in war now—but picking out the unfit and putting them painlessly into the lethal chamber. This alone would benefit mankind by clearing the way for a eugenic race. I am glad to say that some of our states have already passed laws which seem to point to a really scientific view of these things, in the near future. But you are right, Looloo, the old savages went us one better—the Polynesians got there before us, in a way.”

When they got home, Louie was full of excitement. She had never come so near to talking about her own ambitions, and Sam was in a comradely mood.

“You will be all right, Looloo,” concluded Sam, kissing her good night. “You are myself; I know you cannot go astray.”

“I won’t be like you, Dad.”

He laughed, “You can’t help it: you are myself.”

She sulked; she wanted to be like Eleanora Duse, not like Sam.

“I wish I had a Welsh grammar,” she said swiftly.

“Don’t be an idiot! What for?” He laughed.

“I’d like to learn Welsh or Egyptian grammar; I could read the poetry Borrow talks about, and I could read
The Book of the Dead.
”

“Learn good American grammar,” he said, good-humoredly, giving her a flip on the cheek.

“I know that,” said Louie; “there’s no one as good as me.”

“And learn to hold your shoulders straight,” he said, turning away from her and turning on the radio. “You know, Looloo, I’d like to get half an hour on a station and get direct contact with a broader audience: imagine talking to your fellow man from coast to coast!”

She went up to bed insulted again.

“I will repay,” she said, on the stairs, halting and looking over the banisters, with a frown. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay, no, vengeance is mine, I will repay.”

She dreamed she had a large scythe, suspended in space, and in this dusky space was God, softly thundering with the rhythm of a pendulum, but the pendulum was the scythe. The scythe, which she was somehow operating, swung closer to the earth and began there to mow the grass. The heartbeats of God grew louder with long rollings, like the gong in the hall, and she thought, “It is the last day.” She woke. The gong was being beaten in the hall as if to get them up for the morning, but it was dark still. Down in the hall Henny cried,

“I’ll bring people in; help! Louie, your father’s beating me!” Louie heard Bonnie rushing downstairs.

“He lives,” said Henny to herself, in her bed, “in a golden cloud floating about over a lot of back alleys he never sees; and I’m a citizen of those back alleys, like a lot of other sick sheep. I’d like to pull the wool off his eyes, but I don’t dare. He’d take the children away from me; I’d be branded, hounded—I know his Lordship. I’m steaming with this heat and the pain I’m in. I suppose he’s too good to notice that, because he keeps making Dr. Doe itemize the bill, the tooth patchings are getting few and far between. Connie O’Meara thinks she’s a modern woman; and I have a vote too. But the fact remains that a man can take my children from me if he gets something on me; and a lot of fat old maids and scrawny hags in their fifties stand back of every darn man-made law in this and any other state. I have to be pure and chaste before getting married and after—for whom please?—for Samuel Pollit; otherwise, I’m no good before and he can take my children after. He’s dying to do it, too, and have them brought up by that monster Jo Pollit, I suppose, or his beautiful Louisa, in memory of dear Rachel, the great love: anyone, as long as he grabs them away from me, because I’m no good.”

Henny tossed and turned, trying to make some plans about her finances in Sam’s absence. Would she get her own family together and arrange a kind of unofficial moratorium with her creditors so that either she could pay them off by economy and reform, or her father or Hassie could be eventually moved to pay them off? What would she do if Sam’s stern nature or perfect morality should weaken or if, by any freak of scientific curiosity or middle-aged humanity, he might start looking into her life and asking himself what sort of a person he was married to? It would be all up with Henny and her children. Yet she daily trembled before the wild plunge of confessing herself to him and letting him know the worst; with rage, envy, malice, she thought of his ignorance of all her troubles. He thought she was a sort of ignorant servant, and so he paid her almost nothing. He hankered after women with degrees and time to run to committee meetings. “It is easy,” thought Henny, “to worry about peace conferences when you have servants, a car, and new hats; yes, then you give teas and so forth at home, to show off your new Persian mat and cocktail table. I thought of doing the same: I understand. But it is easy to get a little flutter out of the latest anti-alien bill out of New Mexico and the fate of peons when a man hasn’t the courage to get a mistress, or incur a debt, or take a drink of whisky!” Henny got up and started to play patience on her dressing table, brushing aside the extensive toilet set and looking at herself occasionally in the mirror. She liked to do this: it refreshed and encouraged her. “Good God, what an old hag!” she said as she sat down; “really, that Bert is a good soul! I must do something, dye my hair or something—but I hate it! Especially with my wrinkles! A young wig on an old face—very convincing. Why with his prudery and chastity the wretch has used me up more than four husbands.” She began to laugh, “But here he lives like a Mormon with women all round him, sister, wife so-called, servant at times, daughters to work for him, to say nothing of secretaries and public women to admire him and hold his hand, distant relations visiting him—and yet no one in his bed!” She slapped down the cards irritably, “Anything rather than lose my expectations! Poor wretches, poor miserable wretches! And to think the poor creature, his sister, that washes his floors for him can’t even kiss her knave of hearts because it doesn’t suit his name.” She threw back her head and laughed fully but falsely to herself in the mirror. The pack was out. She lifted two or three cards and peeped, then abstracted a card and put it in its place. But after two or three more moves, she suddenly began to gather them in and shuffle them. As usual, she had cheated without the game’s coming out. She began to lay the cards out again, then said, “Who the dickens cares if it comes out or not?” and, pulling her gown round her, went out to make herself some tea. First, she shut the door, because she had left the cards lying on the table. Louie and Sam both heard familiar noises in the kitchen. Louie dropped off at once again, but Sam had been restless and now lay awake thinking. Perhaps, now, in the middle of the night, he should go down and talk to her (or would she wake the children with her woman’s hysterics?). He turned and tossed while the teamaking was in progress; he was afraid of her execrations, afraid of her hardness and misery. He called a spade the predecessor of modern agriculture, she called it a muck dig: they had no words between them intelligible. At last he rolled out of bed and stood dubiously on his bedside mat shuffling his toes into each other, and then at the head of the stairs, shilly-shallying. At last he padded downstairs. There was a curious rumpling noise in the kitchen. In the great hall below it was cooler. He stood just outside the fall of light trying to see what she was doing. He was startled to see her leaning backwards on a loose-jointed kitchen chair, fixing a roller blind. He waited until she had regained her balance and then cried,

“Pet, why couldn’t it wait till the morning? Of all the fool things!”

“Oh, my God!” she cried, turning quickly with her hand on her chest; then furiously, “How you frightened me! Was that your idea? Why didn’t you let me hear you coming instead of sneaking up on me, spying on me in the middle of the night? What do you want? Are you spying on me as usual?”

“Pet, why the deuce do you do these fool things? Half the accidents are caused by fool women in homes doing stupid things.”

“If you think I care if I break my neck!” She laughed, all the deep smudges and lines in her face coming out. “A broken arm, and I’d have a holiday perhaps; a broken back, and I’d have a holiday forever.”

“Henny, drink your tea. I came to talk to you quietly while the others are in bed—about my trip!”

“I should think so! But why at this unearthly hour? Are you afraid of their hearing what I have to say to you?”

“Let’s talk, Pet, while we have the chance. We are bringing up a family and we haven’t exchanged words for years.”

“Whose fault is it, I’d like to know,” she said tossing her head and her poor naked neck with its goose flesh. “Every word you say to me is an insult. I used to go out with you till you insulted me in public. I used to have friends here till you insulted them. I won’t let my children hear their mother insulted. When they get sense what will they think of you treating their mother that way?”