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"Does she want me now?" he asked.
"No," said Roger. And he told of her plan for the children. "I volunteered myself," he added, "but she wouldn't
hear to it."
"Oh, my God, man, you wouldn't do," said Bruce, in droll disparagement. "You with forty-nine bottles of
pasteurized milk? Suppose you smashed one? Where'd you be? Moving our family isn't a job; it's a science,
and I've got my degree." He rose and his face softened. "Poor girl, she mustn't worry like that. I'll run in and
tell her I'll do it myself--just to get it off her mind."
He went to his wife. And when he came back his dark features appeared a little more drawn.
"Poor devil," thought Roger, "he's scared to death--just as I used to be myself."
"Pretty tough on a woman, isn't it?" Bruce muttered, smiling constrainedly.
"Did Baird say everything's going well?" Baird was Edith's physician.
"Yes. He was here this afternoon, and he said he'd be back this evening." Bruce stopped with a queer little
scowl of suspense. "I told her I'd see to the trip with the kiddies, and it seemed to relieve her a lot." His eye
went to a pile of documents that lay on the desk before him. "It'll play the very devil with business, taking
CHAPTER VI 25
three days off just now. But I guess I can manage it somehow--"
A muscle began to twitch on his face. He re-lit his pipe with elaborate care and looked over at Roger
confidingly:
"Do you know what's the matter with kids these days? It's the twentieth century," he said. "It's a disease. It
starts in their teeth. No modern girl can get married unless she has had her teeth straightened for years. Our
dentist's bill, this year alone, was over eight hundred dollars. But that isn't all. It gets into their young
intestines, God bless 'em, and makes you pasteurize all they eat. It gets into their nerves and tears 'em up, and
your only chance to save 'em is school--not a common school but a 'simple' school, tuition four hundred
dollars a year. And you hire a dancing teacher besides--I mean a rhythm teacher--and let 'em shake it out of
their feet. And after that you buy 'em clothes--not fluffy clothes, but 'simple' clothes, the kind which always
cost the most. And then you build a simple home, in a simple place like Morristown. The whole idea is
simplicity. If you can't make enough to buy it, you're lost. If you can make enough, just barely enough, you
get so excited you lose your head--and do what I did Monday."
The two men smiled at each other. Roger was very fond of Bruce.
"What did you do Monday?" he asked.
"I bought that car I told you about."
"Splendid! Best thing in the world for you! Tell me all about it!"
And while Bruce rapidly grew engrossed in telling of the car's fine points, Roger pictured his son-in-law
upon hot summer evenings (for Bruce spent his summers in town) forgetting his business for a time and
speeding out into the country. Then he thought of Edith and the tyranny of her motherhood, always draining
her husband's purse and keeping Edith so wrapt up in her children and their daily needs that she had lost all
interest in anything outside her home. What was there wrong about it? He knew that Edith prided herself on
being like her mother. But Judith had always found time for her friends. He himself had been more as Edith
was now. How quickly after Judith died he had dropped all friends, all interests. "That's it," he ruefully told
himself, "Edith takes after her father." And the same curious feeling which he had had with Laura, came back
to him with her sister. This daughter, too, was a part of himself. His deep instinctive craving to keep to
himself and his family was living on in Edith, was already dominating her home. What a queer mysterious
business it was, this tie between a man and his child.
He was thinking of this when Baird arrived. Allan Baird was not only the doctor who had brought Edith's
children into the world, he was besides an intimate friend, he had been Bruce's room-mate at college. As he
came strolling into the room with his easy greeting of "Well, folks--" his low gruff voice, his muscular
frame, over six feet two, and the kindly calm assurance in his lean strong visage, gave to Bruce and Roger the
feeling of safety they needed. For this kind of work was his life. He had specialized on women, and after over
fifteen years of toilsome uphill labor he had become at thirty-seven one of the big gynecologists. He was
taking his success with the quiet relish of a man who had had to work for it hard. And yet he had not been
spoiled by success. He worked even harder than before--so hard, in fact, that Deborah, with whom through
Bruce and Edith he had long ago struck up an easy bantering friendship, had sturdily set herself the task of
prying open his eyes a bit. She had taken him to her school at night and to queer little foreign cafés. And
Baird, with a humor of his own, had retaliated by dragging her to the Astor Roof and to musical plays.
"If my eyes are to be opened," he had doggedly declared, "I propose to have some diamonds in the scenery,
and a little cheery ragtime, too. You've got a good heart, Deborah Gale, but your head is full of tenements."
To-night to divert Bruce's thoughts from his wife, Baird started him talking of his work. In six weeks Bruce
CHAPTER VI 26
had crammed his mind with the details of skyscraper building, and his talk was bewildering now, bristling
with technical terms, permeated through and through with the feeling of strain and fierce competition. As
Roger listened he had again that sharp and oppressive sensation of a savage modern town unrelentingly
pressing, pressing in. Restlessly he glanced at Baird who sat listening quietly. And Roger thought of the
likeness between their two professions. For Bruce, too, was a surgeon. His patients were the husbands in their
distracting offices. Baird's were the wives and mothers in their equally distracting homes. Which were more
tense, the husbands or wives? And, good Lord, what was it all about, this feverish strain of getting and
spending? What were they spending? Their very life's blood. And what were they getting? Happiness? What
did most of them know of real happiness? How little they knew, how blind they were, and yet how they
laughed and chattered along, how engrossed in their little games. What children, oh, what children!
"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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]