His Family (7 page)

"And am I any better than the rest? Do I know what I'm after--what I'm about?"

He left them soon, for he felt very tired. He went to his daughter to say good-night. And in her room the talk he had heard became to him suddenly remote, that restless world of small account. For in Edith, in the one brief hour since her father had seen her last, there had come a great transformation, into her face an eager light. She was slipping down into a weird small world which for a brief but fearful season was to be utterly her own, with agony and bloody sweat, and joy and a deep mystery. Clumsily he took her hand. It was moist and he felt it clutch his own. He heard her breathing rapidly.

"Good-night," he said in a husky tone. "I'll be so glad, my dear, so glad."

For answer she gave him a hurried smile, a glance from her bright restless eyes. Then he went heavily from the room.

* * * * *

At home he found Deborah sitting alone, with a pile of school papers in her lap. As he entered she slowly turned her head.

"How is Edith?" she asked him. Roger told of his visit uptown, and spoke of Edith's anxiety over getting the children up to the farm.

"I'll take them myself," said Deborah.

"But how can you get away from school?"

"Oh, I think I can manage it. We'll leave on Friday morning and I can be back by Sunday night. I'll love it," Deborah answered.

"It'll be a great relief to her," said Roger, lighting a cigar. Deborah resumed her work, and there was silence for a time.

"I let George sit up with me till an hour after his bedtime," she told her father presently. "We started talking about white rats--you see it's still white rats with George--and that started us wondering about God. George wonders if God really knows about rats. 'Has he ever stuck his face right down and had a good close look at one? Has God ever watched a rat stand up and brush his whiskers with both paws? Has he ever really laughed at rats? And that's another thing, Aunt Deborah--does God ever laugh at all? Does he know how to take a joke? If he don't, we might as well quit right now!'"

Roger laughed with relish, and his daughter smiled at him:

"Then the talk turned from rats and God to a big dam out in the Rockies. George has been reading about it, he's thinking of being an engineer. And there was so much he wanted to know that he was soon upon the verge of discovering my ignorance--when all of a sudden a dreamy look, oh, a very dreamy look, came into his eyes--and he asked me this." And over her bright expressive face came a scowl of boyish intensity: "Suppose I
was
an engineer--and I was working on a dam, or may be a bridge, in the Rockies. And say it was pretty far down south--say around the Grand Canyon. I should think they'd need a dam down there, or anyhow a bridge,' said George. And he eyed me in a cautious way which said as plain as the nose on your face, 'Good Lord, she's only a woman, and she won't understand.' But I showed him I was serious, and he asked me huskily, 'Suppose it was winter, Aunt Deborah, and the Giants were in Texas. Do you think I could get a few days off?' And then before he could tell me the Giants were a baseball nine, I said I was sure he could manage it. You should have seen his face light up. And he added very fervently, 'Gee, it must be wonderful to be an engineer out there!'"

Roger chuckled delightedly and Deborah went on with her work. "How good she is with young uns," he thought. "What a knack she has of drawing 'em out. What a pity she hasn't some of her own."

He slept until late the next morning, and awoke to find Deborah by his bed.

"It's another boy," she told him. Roger sat up excitedly. "Bruce has just telephoned the news. The children and I have breakfasted, and they're going out with their nurse. Suppose you and I go up and see Bruce and settle this trip to the mountains."

About an hour later, arriving at Edith's apartment, they found Bruce downstairs with Allan Baird who was just taking his departure. Bruce's dark eyes shone with relief, but his hand was hot and nervous. Allan, on the contrary, held out to Edith's father a hand as steady and relaxed as was the bantering tone of his voice.

"Bruce," he said, "has for once in his life decided to do something sensible. He's going to drop his wretched job and take a week off with his children."

"And worry every minute he's gone," Deborah retorted, "and come back and work day and night to catch up. But he isn't going to do it. I've decided to take the children myself."

"You have?" cried Bruce delightedly.

"You'll do no such thing," said Allan, indignant.

"Oh, you go to thunder," Bruce put in. "Haven't you any delicacy? Can't you see this is no business of yours?"

"It isn't, eh," Allan sternly rejoined. And of Deborah he demanded, "Didn't you say you'd go with me to 'Pinafore' this Saturday night?"

"Ah," sneered Bruce. "So that's your game. And for one little night of your pleasure you'd do me out of a week of my life!"

"Like that," said Baird, with a snap of his fingers.

"I'm going, though," said Deborah.

"Quite right, little woman," Bruce admonished her earnestly. "Don't let him rob you of your happiness."

"Come here," growled Baird to Deborah. She followed him into the living room, and Roger went upstairs with Bruce.

"If he ever hopes to marry that girl," said Bruce, with an anxious backward glance, "he's got to learn to treat her with a little consideration."

"Quit your quarreling," Roger said. "What's a week in the mountains to you? Hasn't your wife just risked her life?"

"Sure she has," said Bruce feelingly. "And I propose to stick by her, too."

"Can I see her?"

"No, you can't--another of Baird's fool notions."

"Then where's the baby?"

"Right in here."

Silently in front of the cradle Bruce and Roger stood looking down with the content which comes to men on such occasions when there is no woman by their side expecting them to say things.

"I made it a rule in my family," Roger spoke up presently, "to have my first look at each child alone."

"Same here," said Bruce. And they continued their silent communion. A few moments later, as they were leaving, Deborah came into the room and went softly to the cradle. Downstairs they found that Allan had gone, and when Deborah rejoined them she said she was going to stick to her plan. It was soon arranged that she and the youngsters should start on their journey the following day.

Back at home she threw herself into the packing and was busy till late that night. At daybreak she was up again, for they were to make an early start. Bruce came with his new automobile, the children were all bundled in, together with Deborah and their nurse, and a half hour later at the train Bruce and Roger left them--Deborah flushed and happy, surrounded by luggage, wraps, small boys, an ice box, toys and picture books. The small red hat upon her head had already been jerked in a scrimmage, far down over one of her ears.

"Don't worry about us, Bruce," she said. "We're going to have the time of our lives!" Bruce fairly beamed his gratitude.

"If she don't marry," he declared, as he watched the train move slowly out, "there'll be a great mother wasted."

CHAPTER VII

In the weeks which followed, Roger found the peace of his home so interrupted and disturbed by wedding preparations that often retreating into his den he earnestly told himself he was through, that a man with three grown daughters was a fool to show any sympathy with the utter folly of their lives. Yield an inch and they took a mile! It began one night when Deborah said,

"Now, dearie, I think you had better make up your mind to give Laura just the kind of wedding she likes."

And Roger weakly agreed to this, but as time wore on he discovered that the kind of wedding Laura liked was a thing that made his blood run cold. There seemed to be no end whatever to the young bride's blithe demands. The trousseau part of it he didn't mind. To the gowns and hats and gloves and shoes and trunks and jaunty travelling bags which came pouring into the house, he made no objection. All that, he considered, was fair play. But what got on Roger's nerves was this frantic fuss and change! The faded hall carpet had to come up, his favorite lounge was whisked away, the piano was re-tuned while he was trying to take a nap, rugs were beaten, crates and barrels filled the halls, and one whole bedroom stripped and bare was transformed into a shop where the wedding presents were displayed. In the shuffle his box of cigars disappeared. In short, there was the devil to pay!

And Deborah, was as bad as the bride. At times it appeared to Roger as though her fingers fairly itched to jab and tug at his poor old house, which wore an air of mute reproach. She revealed a part of her nature that he viewed with dark amazement. Every hour she could spare from school, she was changing something or other at home--with an eager glitter in her eyes. Doing it all for Laura, she said. Fiddlesticks and rubbish! She did it because she liked it!

In gloomy wrath one afternoon he went up to see Edith and quiet down. She was well on the way to recovery, but instead of receiving solace here he only found fresh troubles. For sitting up in her old-fashioned bed, with an old-fashioned cap of lace upon her shapely little head, Edith made her father feel she had washed her hands of the whole affair.

"I'm sorry," she said in an injured tone, "that Laura doesn't care enough about her oldest sister to put off the wedding two or three weeks so I could be there. It seems rather undignified, I think, for a girl to hurry her wedding so. I should have loved to make it the dear simple kind of wedding which mother would have wanted. But so long as she doesn't care for that--and in fact has only found ten minutes--once--to run in and see the baby--"

In dismay her father found himself defending the very daughter of whom he had come to complain. It was not such a short engagement, he said, he had learned they had been engaged some time before they told him.

"Do you approve of that?" she rejoined. "When I was engaged, I made Bruce go to you before I even let him--" here Edith broke off primly. "Of course that was some time ago. An engagement, Laura tells me, is 'a mere experiment' nowadays. They 'experiment' till they feel quite sure--then notify their parents and get married in a week."

"She is rushing it, I admit," Roger soothingly replied. "But she has her mind set on Paris in June."

"Paris in June," said Edith, "sums up in three words Laura's whole conception of marriage. You really ought to talk to her, father. It's your duty, it seems to me."

"What do you mean?"

"I'd rather not tell you." Edith's glance went sternly to the cradle by her bed. "Laura pities me," she said, "for having had five children."

"Oh, now, my dear girl!"

"She does, though--she said as much. When she dropped in the other day and I tried to be sympathetic and give her a little sound advice, she said I had had the wedding I liked and the kind of married life I liked, and she was going to have hers. And she made it quite plain that her kind is to include no children. It's to be simply an effort to find by 'experiment' whether or not she loves Hal Sloane. If she doesn't--" Edith gave a slight but emphatic wave of dismissal.

"Do you mean to say Laura told you that?" her father asked with an angry frown.

"I mean she made me feel it--as plainly as I'm telling it! What I can't understand," his daughter went on, "is Deborah's attitude in the affair."

"What's the matter with Deborah?" inquired Roger dismally.

"Oh, nothing's the matter with Deborah. She's quite self-sufficient. She at least can play with modern ideas and keep her head while she's doing it. But when poor Laura--a mere child with the mind of a chicken--catches vaguely at such ideas, applies them to her own little self and risks her whole future happiness, it seems to me perfectly criminal for Deborah not to interfere! Not even a word of warning!"

"Deborah believes," said her father, "in everyone's leading his own life."

"That's rot," was Edith's curt reply. "Do I lead my own life? Does Bruce? Do you?"

"No," growled Roger feelingly.

"Do my children?" Edith demanded. "I know Deborah would like them to. That's her latest and most modern fad, to run a school where every child shall sit with a rat in its lap or a goat, and do just what he pleases--follow his natural bent, she says. I hope she won't come up to the mountains and practice on my children. I should hate to break with Deborah," Edith ended thoughtfully.

Roger rose and walked the room. The comforting idea entered his mind that when the wedding was over he would take out his collection of rings and carefully polish every one. But even this hope did not stay with him long.

"With Laura at home," he heard Edith continue, "you at least had a daughter to run your house. If Deborah tries to move you out--"

"She won't!" cried Roger in alarm.

"If she does," persisted Edith, "or if she begins any talk of the kind--you come to me and _I'll_ talk to her!"

Her father walked in silence, his head down, frowning at the floor.

"It seems funny," Edith continued, "that women like me who give children their lives, and men like Bruce who are building New York--actually doing it all the time--have so little to say in these modern ideas. I suppose it's because we're a little too real."

"To come back to the wedding," Roger suggested.

"To come back to the wedding, father dear," his daughter said compassionately. "I'm afraid it's going to be a 'mere form' which will make you rather wretched. When you get so you can't endure it, come in and see me and the baby."

As he started for home, her words of warning recurred to his mind. Yes, here was the thing that disturbed him most, the ghost lurking under all this confusion, the part which had to do with himself. It was bad enough to know that his daughter, his own flesh and blood, was about to settle her fate at one throw. But to be moved out of his house bag and baggage! Roger strode wrathfully up the street.

"It's your duty to talk to her," Edith had said. And he meditated darkly on this: "Maybe I will and maybe I won't. I know my duties without being told. How does Edith know what her mother liked? We had our own likings, her mother and I, and our own ideas, long after she was tucked into bed. And yet she's always harping on 'what mother would have wanted.' What I should like to know--right now--is what Judith would want if she were here!"