In a Little Town Part 22

"Just putterin' 'round the kitchen gettin' supper started. I went up-stairs and knocked at Stevie's door. He didn't answer. Guess he's asleep."

"Guess so."

"It seems awful good, Paw, to be back in this old place, don't it?--you and me just settin' here and our boy safe and sound asleep up-stairs."

"That's so. As the fellow says in the circus, here we are again, Maw."

"Here we are again, Paw."

AND THIS IS MARRIAGE

His soul floated upward from the lowermost depths of oblivion, slowly, as a water-plant, broken beneath, drifts to the surface. And then he was awake and unutterably afraid.

His soul opened, as it were, its eyes in terror and his fleshly eyelids went ajar. There was nothing to frighten him except his own thoughts, but they seemed to have waited all ready loaded with despair for the instant of his waking.

The room was black about him. The world was black. He had left the window open, but he could not see outdoors. Only his memory told him where the window was. Never a star pinked the heavens to distinguish it.

He could not tell cas.e.m.e.nt from sky, nor window from wall, nor wall from ceiling or floor. He was as one hung in primeval chaos before light had been decreed.

He could not see his own pillow. He knew of it only because he felt it where it was hot under his hot cheek. He could not see the hand he raised to push the hair from his wet brow. He knew that he had a hand and a brow only from their contact, from the sense of himself in them, from the throb of his pulse at the surface of himself.

He felt almost completely disembodied, poised in s.p.a.ce, in infinite gloom, alone with complete loneliness. As the old phrase puts it, he was all by himself.

The only sound in his universe, besides the heavy surf of his own blood beating in his ears, was the faint, slow breathing of his wife, asleep in the same bed, yet separated from him by a sword of hostility that kept their souls as far apart as planets are.

He laughed in bitter silence to think how false she was to the devoted love she had promised him, how harsh her last words had been and how strange from the lips that used to murmur every devotion, every love-word, every trust.

He wanted to whirl on her, shake her out of the cowardly refuge of sleep, and resume the wrangle that had ended in exhaustion.

He wanted to gag her so that she would hear him out for once and not break into every phrase. He wanted to tell her for her own good in one clear, cold, logical, unbroken harangue how atrocious she was, how futile, fiendish, heartless. But he knew that she would not listen to him. Even if he gagged her mouth her mind would still dodge and buffet him. How ancient was the experience that warned a man against argument with a woman! And that wise old saw, "Let sleeping dogs lie," referred even better to wives. He would not let her know that he was awake--awake, perhaps, for hours of misery.

This had happened often of late. It had been a hard week, day after day of bitter toil wearing him down in body and fraying his every nerve.

His business was in a bad way, and he alone could save it, and he could save it only by ingenuity and inspiration. But the inspiration, he was sure, would not come to him till he could rest throughout.

Sleep was his hope, his pa.s.sion, food, drink, medicine. He was heavily pledged at the bank. He could borrow no more. The president had threatened him if he did not pay what was overdue. Bigger businesses than his were being left to crash. A financial earthquake was rocking every tower in the world.

Though he needed cash vitally to further his business, there was a sharper and sharper demand upon him from creditors desperately harried by their own desperate creditors. He must find with his brain some new source of cash. He must fight the world. But how could he fight without rest? Even pugilists rested between rounds.

He had not slept a whole night for a week. To-night he had gone to bed sternly resolved on a while of annihilation. Anything for the brief sweet death with the morning of resurrection.

And then she had quarreled with him. And now he was awake, and he felt that he would not sleep.

He wondered what the hour was. He was tempted to rise and make a light and look at his watch, but he felt that the effort and the blow of the glare on his eyes might confirm his insomnia. He lay and wondered, consumed with curiosity as to the hour--as if that knowledge could be of value.

By and by, out of the stillness and the widespread black came the slumbrous tone of a far-off town clock. Three times it rumored in the air as if distance moaned faintly thrice.

Three o'clock! He had had but two hours' sleep, and would have no more!

And he needed ten! To-morrow morning--this morning!--he must join battle for his very existence.

He lay supine, trying not to clench a muscle, seeking to force his surrender to inanition; but he could not get sleep though he implored his soul for it, prayed G.o.d for it.

At length he ceased to try to compel slumber. He lay musing. It is a strange thing to lie musing in the dark. His soul seemed to tug and waver outside his body as he had seen an elephant chained by one leg in a circus tent lean far away from its shackles, and sway and put its trunk forth gropingly. His soul seemed to be under his forehead, pus.h.i.+ng at it as against a door. He felt that if he had a larger, freer forehead he would have more soul and more room for his mind to work.

Then the great fear came over him again. In these wakeful moods he suffered ecstasies of fright.

He was appalled with life. He felt helpless, bodyless, doomed.

On his office wall hung a calendar with a colored picture showing fishermen in a little boat in a fog looking up to see a great Atlantic liner just about to run them down. So the universe loomed over him now, rushed down to crush him. The other people of the world were asleep in their places; his creditors, his rivals were resting, gaining strength to overwhelm him on the morrow, and he must face them unrefreshed.

He dreamed forward through crisis after crisis, through bankruptcy, disgrace, and mortal illness. He thought of his family, the children asleep in their beds under the roof that he must uphold like an Atlas.

Poor little demanding, demanding things! What would become of them when their father broke down and was turned out of his factory and out of his home? How they would hamper him, cling to him, cry out to him not to let them starve, not to let them go cold or barefoot, not to turn them adrift.

Yet they did not understand him. They loved their mother infinitely more. She watched over them, played with them, cuddled and kissed them, while he had to leave the house before they were up, and came home at night too f.a.gged to play their games or endure their noise. And if they were to be punished, she used him as a threat, and saved them up for him to torment and denounce.

They loved her and were afraid of him. Yet what had she done for them?

She had conceived them, borne them, nourished them for a year at most.

Thereafter their food, their shelter, their clothes, their education, their whole prosperity must come from their father. Yet the very necessities of the struggle for their welfare kept him from giving them the time that would win their favor. They complained because he did not buy them more. They were discontented with what they had, and covetous of what the neighbors' children had, even where it was less than their own.

He busied himself awhile at figuring out how much, all told, his children's upbringing had cost him. The total was astounding. If he had half of that sum now he would not be fretting about his pay-roll or his notes. He would triumph over every obstacle. Next he made estimate of what the children would cost him in the future. As they grew their expenses grew with them. He could not hope for the old comfort of sons, when they made a man strong, for nowadays grown sons must be started in business at huge cost with doubtful results and no intention of repaying the investment. And daughters have to be dressed up like holiday packages, expensive gifts that must be sent prepaid and may be returned, collect.

He could see nothing but vanity back of him and a welter of cost ahead.

He could see no hope of ever catching up, of ever resting. His only rest would come when he died.

If he did not sleep soon he would a.s.suredly die or go mad. Perhaps he was going mad already. He had fought too long, too hard. He would begin to babble and giggle soon and be led away to twiddle his fingers and talk with phantoms. He saw himself as he had seen other witless, slavering spectacles that had once been human, and a nausea of fear crushed big sweat out of his wincing skin.

Better to die than to play the living burlesque of himself. Better to die than to face the shame of failure, the shame of reproach and ridicule; the epitaph of his business a few lines in the small type of "Business Troubles." Better to kill himself than risk the danger of going mad and killing perhaps his own children and his wife. He knew a man once, a faithful, devoted, gentle struggler with the world, whom a sudden insanity had led to the butchery of his wife and three little boys. They found him t.i.ttering among his mangled dead, and calling them pet names, telling the shattered red things that he had wrought G.o.d's will upon them.

What if this should come to him! Better to end all the danger of that by removing himself from the reach of mania or shame. It would be the final proof of his love for his flock. And they would not think bitterly of him. All things are forgiven the dead. They would miss him and remember the best of him.

They would appreciate what they had cost him, too, when they no longer had him to draw on. He felt very sorry for himself. Grown man as he was, he was driven back into infancy by his terrors, and like a pouting, supperless boy, he wanted to die to spite the rest of the family and win their apologies even if he should not hear them.

He wondered if, after all, his wife would not be happier to be rid of him. No, she would regret him for one thing at least, that he left her without means.

Well, she deserved to be penniless. Why should she expect a man to kill himself for her sake and leave her a wealthy widow to buy some other man? Let her practise then some of the economies he had vainly begged of her before. If she had been worthy of his posthumous protection she would not have treated him so outrageously at a time of such stress as this.

She knew he was dog-tired, yet she allowed him to be angered, and she knew just what themes were sure to provoke his wrath. So she had harped on these till she had rendered him to a frenzy.

They had stood about or paced the floor or dropped in chairs and fought as they flung off their clothes piecemeal. She had combed and brushed her hair viciously as she raged, weeping the unbeautiful tears of wrath.

But he had not had that comfort of tears; his tears ran down the inside of his soul and burned. She goaded him out of his ordinary self-control--knew just how to do it and reveled in it.

No doubt he had said things to her that a gentleman does not say to a lady, that hardly any man would say to any woman. He was startled to remember what he had said to her. He abhorred the thought of such things coming from his lips--and to the mother of his children. But the blame for these atrocities was also hers. She had driven him frantic; she would have driven a less-dignified man to violence, to blows, perhaps. And she had had the effrontery to blame him for driving her frantic when it was she that drove him.

Finally they had stormed themselves out, squandered their vocabularies of abuse, and taken resort to silence in a pretended dignity. That is, she had done this. He had relapsed into silence because he realized how impervious to truth or justice she was. Facts she would not deal in.

Logic she abhorred. Reasoning infuriated her.