His Family Part 31

"Are you there, Edith dear?" He listened a moment intently, but he could not hear the reply. Then Deborah said, "Oh, you poor thing. I'm awfully sorry. Edith--don't bother to come downstairs--let me bring you up your supper." A pause. "I wish you would. I'd love to."

He heard Deborah come by his door and go up the second flight of stairs to the room she had taken on the third floor.

"I was wrong," he reflected, "she has been trying--but it doesn't do any good. Women simply haven't it in 'em to see each other's point of view.

Deborah doesn't admire Edith--she can't, she only pities her and puts her down as out of date. And Edith feels that, and it gets her riled, and she sets herself like an angry old hen against all Deborah's new ideas. Why the devil can't they live and let live?"

And he hesitated savagely between a pearl gray _and_ a black cravat. Then he heard another step on the stairs. It was much slower than Deborah's, and cautious and dogged, one foot lifted carefully after the other. It was John, who had finished his kitchen supper and was silently making his way up through the house to his room at the top, there to keep out of sight for the evening. And it came into Roger's mind that John had been acting in just this fas.h.i.+on ever since Edith had been in the house.

"We'll have trouble there, too!" he told himself, as he jerked the black satin cravat into place, a tie he thoroughly disliked. Yes, black, by George, he felt like it to-night! These women! These evenings! This worry!

This war! This world gone raving, driveling mad!

And frowning with annoyance, Roger went down to his dinner.

As he waited he grew impatient. He had eaten no lunch, he was hungry; and he was very tired, too, for he had had his own hard day. Pshaw! He got up angrily. _Somebody_ must be genial here. He went into the dining room and poured himself a good stiff drink. Roger had never been much of a drinker.

Ever since his marriage, cigars had been his only vice. But of late he had been having curious little sinking spells. They worried him, and he told himself he could not afford to get either too tired or too faint.

Nevertheless, he reflected, it was setting a bad example for George. But glancing into his study he saw that the lad was completely absorbed. With knees drawn up, his long lank form all hunched and huddled on the lounge, hair rumpled, George was reading a book which had a cover of tough gray cloth. At the sight of it his grandfather smiled, for he had seen it once before. Where George had obtained it, the Lord only knew. Its t.i.tle was "Bulls and Breeding." A thoroughly practical little book, but nothing for George's mother to see. As his grandfather entered behind him, the boy looked up with a guilty start, and resumed with a short breath of relief.

Young Elizabeth, too, had a furtive air, for instead of preparing her history lesson she was deep in the evening paper reading about the war abroad. Stout and florid, rather plain, but with a frank, attractive face and honest, clear, appealing eyes, this curious creature of thirteen was sitting firmly in her chair with her feet planted wide apart, eagerly scanning an account of the work of American surgeons in France. And again Roger smiled to himself. (He was feeling so much better now.) So Betsy was still thinking of becoming a surgeon. He wondered what she would take up next. In the past two years in swift succession she had made up her mind to be a novelist, an actress and a women's college president. And Roger liked this tremendously.

He loved to watch these two in the house. Here again his family was widening out before him, with new figures arising to draw his attention this way and that. But these were bright distractions. He took a deep, amused delight in watching these two youngsters caught between two fires, on the one side their mother and upon the other their aunt; both obviously drawn toward Deborah, a figure who stood in their regard for all that thrilling outside world, that heaving sparkling ocean on which they too would soon embark; both sternly repressing their eagerness as an insult to their mother, whom they loved and pitied so, regarding her as a brave and dear but rapidly ageing creature "well on in her thirties," whom they must cherish and preserve. They both had such solemn thoughts as they looked at Edith in her chair. But as Roger watched them, with their love and their solemnity, their guilt and their perplexity, with quiet enjoyment he would wait to see the change he knew would come. And it always did. The sudden picking up of a book, the vanis.h.i.+ng of an anxious frown, and in an instant their young minds had turned happily back into themselves, into their own engrossing lives, their plans, their intimate dreams and ambitions, all so curiously bound up with memories of small happenings which had struck them as funny that day and at which they would suddenly chuckle aloud.

And this was only one stage in their growth. What would be the next, he asked, and all the others after that? What kind of world would they live in? Please heaven, there would be no wars. Many old things, no doubt, would be changed, by the work of Deborah and her kind--but not too many, Roger hoped. And these young people, meanwhile, would be bringing up children in their turn. So the family would go on, and multiply and scatter wide, never to unite again. And he thought he could catch glimpses, very small and far away but bright as patches of sunlight upon distant mountain tops, into the widening vista of those many lives ahead. A wistful look crept over his face.

"In their lives too we shall be there, the dim strong figures of the past."

Deborah came into the room, and at once the whole atmosphere changed. Her niece sprang up delightedly.

"Why, Auntie, how lovely you look!" she exclaimed. And Roger eyed Deborah in surprise. Though she did not believe in mourning, she had been wearing dark gowns of late to avoid hurting Edith's feelings. But to-night she had donned bright colors instead; her dress was as near decollete as anything that Deborah wore, and there was a band of dull blue velvet bound about her hair.

"Thanks, dearie," she said, smiling. "Shall we go in to dinner now?" she added to her father. "Edith said not to wait for her--and I'll have to be off rather early this evening."

"What is it to-night?" he inquired.

"A big meeting at Cooper Union."

And at dinner she went on to say that in her five schools the neighborhood clubs had combined to hold this meeting, and she herself was to preside. At once her young niece was all animation.

"Oh, I wish I could go and hear you!" she sighed.

"Afraid you can't, Betsy," her aunt replied. And at this, with an instinctive glance toward the door where her mother would soon come in to stop by her mere presence all such conversation, Elizabeth eagerly threw out one inquiry after the other, pell mell.

"How on earth do you do it?" she wanted to know. "How do you get a speech ready, Aunt Deborah--how much of it do you write out ahead? Aren't you just the least bit nervous--now, I mean--this minute? And how will you feel on the platform? _What on earth do you do with your feet?_"

As the girl bent forward there with her gaze fixed ardently on her aunt, her grandfather thought in half comic dismay, "Lord, now she'll want to be a great speaker--like her aunt. And she will tell her mother so!"

"What's the meeting all about?" he inquired. And Deborah began to explain.

In her five schools the poverty was rapidly becoming worse. Each week more children stayed away or came to school ragged and unkempt, some without any overcoats, small pitiful mites wearing shoes so old as barely to stick on their feet. And when the teachers and visitors followed these children into their homes they found bare, dirty, chilly rooms where the little folk s.h.i.+vered and wailed for food and the mothers looked distracted, gaunt and sullen and half crazed. Over three hundred thousand workers were idle in the city. Meanwhile, to make matters worse, half the money from uptown which had gone in former years into work for the tenements was going over to Belgium instead. And the same relentless drain of war was felt by the tenement people themselves; for all of them were foreigners, and from their relatives abroad, in those wide zones of Europe already blackened and laid waste, in endless torrents through the mails came wild appeals for money.

In such homes her children lived. And Deborah had set her mind on vigorous measures of relief. Landlords must be made to wait and the city be persuaded to give work to the most needy, food and fuel must be secured. As she spoke of the task before her, with a flush of animation upon her bright expressive face at the thought that in less than an hour she would be facing thousands of people, the gloom of the picture she painted was dispelled in the spirit she showed.

"These things always work out," she declared, with an impatient shrug of her shoulders. And watching her admiringly, young Betsy thought, "How strong she is! What a wonderful grown-up woman!" And Roger watching thought, "How young."

"What things?" It was Edith's voice at the door, and among those at the table there was a little stir of alarm. She had entered unnoticed and now took her seat. She was looking pale and tired. "What things work out so finely?" she asked, and with a glance at Deborah's gown,

"Where are you going?" she added.

"To a meeting," Deborah answered.

"Oh." And Edith began her soup. In the awkward pause that followed, twice Deborah started to speak to her sister, but checked herself, for at other dinners just like this she had made such dismal failures.

"By the way, Edith," she said, at last, "I've been thinking of all that furniture of yours which is lying in storage." Her sister looked up at her, startled.

"What about it?" she asked.

"There's so much of it you don't care for," Deborah answered quietly. "Why don't you let a part of it go? I mean the few pieces you've always disliked."

"For what purpose?"

"Why, it seems such a pity not to have Hannah back in the house. She would make things so much easier." Roger felt a glow of relief.

"A capital plan!" he declared at once.

"It would be," Edith corrected him, "if I hadn't already made _other_ plans." And then in a brisk, breathless tone, "You see I've made up my mind," she said, "to sell not only part but _all_ my furniture--very soon--and a few other belongings as well--and use the money to put George and Elizabeth and little Bob back in the schools where they belong."

"Mother!" gasped Elizabeth, and with a prolonged "Oh-h" of delight she ran around to her mother's chair.

"But look here," George blurted worriedly, "I don't like it, mother, darned if I do! You're selling everything--just for school!"

"School is rather important, George," was Edith's tart rejoinder. "If you don't think so, ask your aunt." "What do you think of it, Auntie?" he asked. The cloud which had come on Deborah's face was lifted in an instant.

"I think, George," she answered gently, "that you'd better let your mother do what she thinks best for you. It _will_ make things easier here in the house," she added, to her sister, "but I wish you could have Hannah, too."

"Oh, I'll manage nicely now," said Edith. And with a slight smile of triumph she resumed her dinner.

"The war won't last forever," muttered Roger uneasily. And to himself: "But suppose it _should_ last--a year or more." He did not approve of Edith's scheme. "It's burning her bridges all at once, for something that isn't essential," he thought. But he would not tell her so.

Meanwhile Deborah glanced at the clock.

"Oh! It's nearly eight o'clock! I must hurry or I'll be late," she said.

"Good-night, all--"

And she left them.