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His Family

by Ernest Poole · English · Gutenberg #14396 · 547,718 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: His Family

Author: Ernest Poole


        
Release date: December 20, 2004 [eBook #14396]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIS FAMILY ***

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS
ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO




HIS FAMILY

BY
ERNEST POOLE
AUTHOR OF "THE HARBOR"

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
1917

_All rights reserved_




COPYRIGHT, 1916 AND 1917
BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1917
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1917.




TO M.A.




HIS FAMILY




HIS FAMILY

CHAPTER I


He was thinking of the town he had known. Not of _old_ New York--he had
heard of that from old, old men when he himself had still been young and
had smiled at their garrulity. He was thinking of a _young_ New York, the
mighty throbbing city to which he had come long ago as a lad from the New
Hampshire mountains. A place of turbulent thoroughfares, of shouting
drivers, hurrying crowds, the crack of whips and the clatter of wheels; an
uproarious, thrilling town of enterprise, adventure, youth; a city of
pulsing energies, the center of a boundless land; a port of commerce with
all the world, of stately ships with snowy sails; a fascinating pleasure
town, with throngs of eager travellers hurrying from the ferry boats and
rolling off in hansom cabs to the huge hotels on Madison Square. A city
where American faces were still to be seen upon all its streets, a cleaner
and a kindlier town, with more courtesy in its life, less of the vulgar
scramble. A city of houses, separate homes, of quiet streets with rustling
trees, with people on the doorsteps upon warm summer evenings and groups of
youngsters singing as they came trooping by in the dark. A place of music
and romance. At the old opera house downtown, on those dazzling evenings
when as a boy he had ushered there for the sake of hearing the music, how
the rich joy of being alive, of being young, of being loved, had shone out
of women's eyes. Shimmering satins, dainty gloves and little jewelled
slippers, shapely arms and shoulders, vivacious movements, nods and smiles,
swift glances, ripples, bursts of laughter, an exciting hum of voices.
Then silence, sudden darkness--and music, and the curtain. The great wide
curtain slowly rising....

But all that had passed away.

Roger Gale was a rugged heavy man not quite sixty years of age. His broad,
massive features were already deeply furrowed, and there were two big
flecks of white in his close-curling, grayish hair. He lived in a narrow
red brick house down on the lower west side of the town, in a neighborhood
swiftly changing. His wife was dead. He had no sons, but three grown
daughters, of whom the oldest, Edith, had been married many years. Laura
and Deborah lived at home, but they were both out this evening. It was
Friday, Edith's evening, and as was her habit she had come from her
apartment uptown to dine with her father and play chess. In the living
room, a cheerful place, with its lamp light and its shadows, its
old-fashioned high-back chairs, its sofa, its book cases, its low marble
mantel with the gilt mirror overhead, they sat at a small oval table in
front of a quiet fire of coals. And through the smoke of his cigar Roger
watched his daughter.

Edith had four children, and was soon to have another. A small demure woman
of thirty-five, with light soft hair and clear blue eyes and limbs softly
rounded, the contour of her features was full with approaching maternity,
but there was a decided firmness in the lines about her little mouth. As he
watched her now, her father's eyes, deep set and gray and with signs of
long years of suffering in them, displayed a grave whimsical wistfulness.
For by the way she was playing the game he saw how old she thought him. Her
play was slow and absent-minded, and there came long periods when she did
not make a move. Then she would recall herself and look up with a little
affectionate smile that showed she looked upon him as too heavy with his
age to have noticed her small lapses.

He was grimly amused at her attitude, for he did not feel old at all. With
that whimsical hint of a smile which had grown to be a part of him, he
tried various moves on the board to see how far he could go without
interrupting her reveries. He checkmated her, re-lit his cigar and waited
until she should notice it. And when she did not notice, gravely he moved
back his queen and let the game continue. How many hundreds of games, he
thought, Edith must have played with him in the long years when his spirit
was dead, for her now to take such chances. Nearly every Friday evening for
nearly sixteen years.

Before that, Judith his wife had been here. It was then that the city had
been young, for to Roger it had always seemed as though he were just
beginning life. Into its joys and sorrows too he had groped his way as most
of us do, and had never penetrated deep. But he had meant to, later on.
When in his busy city days distractions had arisen, always he had promised
himself that sooner or later he would return to this interest or passion,
for the world still lay before him with its enthralling interests, its
beauties and its pleasures, its tasks and all its puzzles, intricate and
baffling, all some day to be explored.

This deep zest in Roger Gale had been bred in his boyhood on a farm up in
the New Hampshire mountains. There his family had lived for many
generations. And from the old house, the huge shadowy barn and the crude
little sawmill down the road; from animals, grown people and still more
from other boys, from the meadows and the mountain above with its cliffs
and caves and forests of pine, young Roger had discovered, even in those
early years, that life was fresh, abundant, new, with countless glad
beginnings.

At seventeen he had come to New York. There had followed hard struggles in
lean years, but his rugged health had buoyed him up. And there had been
genial friendships and dreams and explorations, a search for romance, the
strange glory of love, a few furtive ventures that left him dismayed. But
though love had seemed sordid at such times it had brought him crude
exultations. And if his existence had grown more obscure, it had been
somber only in patches, the main picture dazzling still. And still he had
been just making starts.

He had ventured into the business world, clerking now at this, now at that,
and always looking about him for some big opportunity. It had come and he
had seized it, despite the warnings of his friends. What a wild adventure
it had been a bureau of news clippings, a business new and unheard of but
he had been sure that here was growth, he had worked at it day and night,
and the business widening fast had revealed long ramifications which went
winding and stretching away into every phase of American life. And this
life was like a forest, boundless and impenetrable, up-springing,
intertwining. How much could _he_ ever know of it all?

Then had come his marriage. Judith's family had lived long in New York, but
some had died and others had scattered until only she was left. This house
had been hers, but she had been poor, so she had leased it to some friends.
It was through them he had met her here, and within a few weeks he had
fallen in love. He had felt profound disgust for the few wild oats he had
sown, and in his swift reaction he had overworshipped the girl, her beauty
and her purity, until in a delicate way of her own she had hinted that he
was going too far, that she, too, was human and a passionate lover of
living, in spite of her low quiet voice and her demure and sober eyes.

And what beginnings for Roger now, what a piling up of intimate joys,
surprises, shocks of happiness. There had come disappointments, too, sudden
severe little checks from his wife which had brought him occasional
questionings. This love had not been quite _all_ he had dreamed, this woman
not so ardent. He had glimpsed couples here and there that set him to
imagining more consuming passions. Here again he had not explored very
deep. But he had dismissed regrets like these with only a slight
reluctance. For if they had settled down a bit with the coming of their
children, their love had grown rich in sympathies and silent
understandings, in humorous enjoyment of their funny little daughters'
chattering like magpies in the genial old house. And they had looked
happily far ahead. What a woman she had been for plans. It had not been all
smooth sailing. There had come reverses in business, and at home one baby,
a boy, had died. But on they had gone and the years had swept by until he
had reached his forties. Absorbed in his growing business and in his
thriving family, it had seemed to Roger still as though he were just
starting out.

But one day, quite suddenly, the house had become a strange place to him
with a strange remote figure in it, his wife. For he had learned that she
must die. There had followed terrible weeks. Then Judith had faced their
disaster. Little by little she had won back the old intimacy with her
husband; and through the slow but inexorable progress of her ailment, again
they had come together in long talks and plans for their children. At this
same chessboard, in this room, repeatedly she would stop the game and
smiling she would look into the future. At one such time she had said to
him,

"I wonder if it won't be the same with the children as it has been with us.
No matter how long each one of them lives, won't their lives feel to them
unfinished like ours, only just beginning? I wonder how far they will go.
And then their children will grow up and it will be the same with them.
Unfinished lives. Oh, dearie, what children all of us are."

He had put his arm around her then and had held her very tight. And feeling
the violent trembling of her husband's fierce revolt, slowly bending back
her head and looking up into his eyes she had continued steadily:

"And when you come after me, my dear, oh, how hungry I shall be for all you
will tell me. For you will live on in our children's lives."

And she had asked him to promise her that.

But he had not kept his promise. For after Judith's dying he had felt
himself terribly alone, with eternity around him, his wife slipping far
away. And the universe had grown stark and hard, impersonal, relentless,
cold. A storm of doubts had attacked his faith. And though he had resisted
long, for his faith in God had been rooted deep in the mountains of New
England, in the end it had been wrenched away, and with it he had lost all
hope that either for Judith or himself was there any existence beyond the
grave. So death had come to Roger's soul. He had been deaf and blind to his
children. Nights by the thousand spent alone. Like a gray level road in his
memory now was the story of his family.

When had his spirit begun to awaken? He could not tell, it had been so
slow. His second daughter, Deborah, who had stayed at home with her father
when Laura had gone away to school, had done little things continually to
rouse his interest in life. Edith's winsome babies had attracted him when
they came to the house. Laura had returned from school, a joyous creature,
tall and slender, with snapping black eyes, and had soon made her presence
felt. One day in the early afternoon, as he entered the house there had
burst on his ears a perfect gale of laughter; and peering through the
portières he had seen the dining-room full of young girls, a crew as wild
as Laura herself. Hastily he had retreated upstairs. But he had enjoyed
such glimpses. He had liked to see her fresh pretty gowns and to have her
come in and kiss him good-night.

Then had come a sharp heavy jolt. His business had suffered from long
neglect, and suddenly for two anxious weeks he had found himself facing
bankruptcy. Edith's husband, a lawyer, had come to his aid and together
they had pulled out of the hole. But he had been forced to mortgage the
house. And this had brought to a climax all the feelings of guiltiness
which had so long been stirring within him over his failure to live up to
the promise he had made his wife.

And so Roger had looked at his children.

And at first to his profound surprise he had had it forced upon him that
these were three grown women, each equipped with her own peculiar feminine
traits and desires, the swift accumulations of lives which had expanded in
a city that had reared to the skies in the many years of his long sleep.
But very slowly, month by month, he had gained a second impression which
seemed to him deeper and more real. To the eye they were grown women all,
but inwardly they were children still, each groping for her happiness and
each held back as he had been, either by checks within herself or by the
gay distractions of the absorbing city. He saw each of his daughters, parts
of himself. And he remembered what Judith had said: "You will live on in
our children's lives." And he began to get glimmerings of a new
immortality, made up of generations, an endless succession of other lives
extending into the future.

Some of all this he remembered now, in scattered fragments here and there.
Then from somewhere far away a great bell began booming the hour, and it
roused him from his revery. He had often heard the bell of late. A calm
deep-toned intruder, it had first struck in upon his attention something
over two years ago. Vaguely he had wondered about it. Soon he had found it
was on the top of a tower a little to the north, one of the highest
pinnacles of this tumultuous modern town. But the bell was not tumultuous.
And as he listened it seemed to say, "There is still time, but you have not
long."

Edith, sitting opposite him, looked up at the sound with a stir of relief.
Ten o'clock. It was time to go home.

"I wonder what's keeping Bruce," she said. Bruce was still in his office
downtown. As a rule on Friday evenings he came with his wife to supper
here, but this week he had some new business on hand. Edith was vague about
it. As she tried to explain she knitted her brows and said that Bruce was
working too hard. And her father grunted assent.

"Bruce ought to knock off every summer," he said, "for a good solid month,
or better two. Can't you bring him up to the mountains this year?" He
referred to the old New Hampshire home which he had kept as a summer place.
But Edith smiled at the idea.

"Yes, I could bring him," she replied, "and in a week he'd be perfectly
crazy to get back to his office again." She compressed her lips. "I know
what he needs--and we'll do it some day, in spite of him."

"A suburb, eh," her father said, and his face took on a look of dislike.
They had often talked of suburbs.

"Yes," his daughter answered, "I've picked out the very house." He threw at
her a glance of impatience. He knew what had started her on this line.
Edith's friend, Madge Deering, was living out in Morristown. All very well,
he reflected, but her case was not at all the same. He had known Madge
pretty well. Although the death of her husband had left her a widow at
twenty-nine, with four small daughters to bring up, she had gone on
determinedly. Naturally smart and able, Madge was always running to town,
keeping up with all her friends and with every new fad and movement there,
although she made fun of most of them. Twice she had taken her girls
abroad. But Edith was quite different. In a suburb she would draw into her
house and never grow another inch. And Bruce, poor devil, would commute and
take work home from the office. But Roger couldn't tell her that.

"I'd be sorry to see you do it," he said. "I'd miss you up in the
mountains."

"Oh, we'd come up in the summer," she answered. "I wouldn't miss the
mountains for worlds!"

Then they talked of summer plans. And soon again Edith's smooth pretty
brows were wrinkling absorbedly. It was hard in her planning not to be sure
whether her new baby would come in May or early June. It was only the first
of April now. While she talked her father watched her. He liked her quiet
fearlessness in facing the ordeal ahead. Into the bewildering city he felt
her searching anxiously to find good things for her small brood, to make
every dollar count, to keep their little bodies strong, to guard their
hungry little souls from many things she thought were bad. Of all his
daughters, he told himself, she was the one most like his wife.

While she was talking Bruce came in. Of medium height and a wiry build, his
quick kindly smile of greeting did not conceal the fine tight lines about
his mouth and between his eyes. His small trim moustache was black, but his
hair already showed streaks of gray although he was not quite thirty-eight,
and as he lit a cigarette his right hand twitched perceptibly.

Bruce Cunningham had married just after he left law school. He had worked
in a law office which took receiverships by the score, and through managing
bankrupt concerns by slow degrees he had made himself a financial surgeon.
He had set up an office of his own and was doing splendidly. But he worked
under fearful tension. Bruce had to deal with bankrupts who had barely
closed their eyes for weeks, men half out of their minds from the strain,
the struggle to keep up their heads in those angry waters of finance which
Roger vaguely pictured as a giant whirlpool. Though honest enough in his
own affairs, Bruce showed a genial relish for all the tricks of the savage
world which was as the breath to his nostrils. And at times he appeared so
wise and keen he made Roger feel like a child. But again it was Bruce who
seemed the child. He seemed to be so naïve at times, and Edith had him so
under her thumb. Roger liked to hear Bruce's stories of business, when
Edith would let her husband talk. But this she would not often do, for she
said Bruce needed rest at night. She reproved him now for staying so late,
she wrung from him the fact that he'd had no supper.

"Well, Bruce," she exclaimed impatiently, "now isn't that just like you?
You're going straight home--that's where you're going--"

"To be fed up and put to bed," her husband grumbled good-naturedly. And
while she made ready to bundle him off he turned to his father-in-law.

"What do you think's my latest?" he asked, and he gave a low chuckle which
Roger liked. "Last week I was a brewer, to-day I'm an engineer," he said.
"Can you beat it? A building contractor. Me." And as he smoked his
cigarette, in laconic phrases he explained how a huge steel construction
concern had gone to the wall, through building skyscrapers "on spec" and
outstripping even the growth of New York. "They got into court last week,"
he said, "and the judge handed me the receivership. The judge and I have
been chums for years. He has hay fever--so do I."

"Come, Bruce, I'm ready," said his wife.

"I've been in their office all day," he went on. "Their general manager was
stark mad. He hadn't been out of the office since last Sunday night, he
said. You had to ask him a question and wait--while he looked at you and
held onto his chair. He broke down and blubbered--the poor damn fool--he'll
be in Matteawan in a week--"

"You'll be there yourself if you don't come home," broke in Edith's voice
impatiently.

"And out of that poor devil, and out of the mess his books are in, I've
been learning engineering!"

He had followed his wife out on the steps. He turned back with a quick
appealing smile:

"Well, good-night--see you soon--"

"Good-night, my boy," said Roger. "Good luck to the engineering."

"Oh, father dear," cried Edith, from the taxi down below. "Remember supper
Sunday night--"

"I won't forget," said Roger.

       *       *       *       *       *

He watched them start off up the street. The night was soft, refreshing,
and the place was quiet and personal. The house was one of a dozen others,
some of red brick and some of brown stone, that stood in an uneven row on a
street but a few rods in length, one side of a little triangular park
enclosed by a low iron fence, inside of which were a few gnarled trees and
three or four park benches. On one of these benches his eye was caught by
the figure of an old woman there, and he stood a moment watching her, some
memory stirring in his mind.

Occasionally somebody passed. Otherwise it was silent here. But even in the
silence could be felt the throes of change; the very atmosphere seemed
charged with drastic things impending. Already the opposite house line had
been broken near the center by a high apartment building, and another still
higher rose like a cliff just back of the house in which Roger lived. Still
others, and many factory lofts, reared shadowy bulks on every hand. From
the top of one an enormous sign, a corset pictured forth in lights, flashed
out at regular intervals; and from farther off, high up in the misty haze
of the night, could be seen the gleaming pinnacle where hour by hour that
great bell slowly boomed the time away. Yes, here the old was passing.
Already the tiny parklet was like the dark bottom of a pit, with the hard
sparkling modern town towering on every side, slowly pressing, pressing in
and glaring down with yellow eyes.

But Roger noticed none of these things. He watched the old woman on the
bench and groped for the memory she had stirred. Ah, now at last he had it.
An April night long, long ago, when he had sat where she was now, while
here in the house his wife's first baby, Edith, had begun her life....

Slowly he turned and went inside.




CHAPTER II


Roger's hearing was extremely acute. Though the room where he was sitting,
his study, was at the back of the house, he heard Deborah's key at the
street door and he heard the door softly open and close.

"Are you there, dearie?" Her voice from the hallway was low; and his
answer, "Yes, child," was in the same tone, as though she were with him in
the room. This keen sense of hearing had long been a peculiar bond between
them. To her father, Deborah's voice was the most distinctive part of her,
for often as he listened the memory came of her voice as a girl,
unpleasant, hurried and stammering. But she had overcome all that. "No
grown woman," she had declared, when she was eighteen, "has any excuse for
a voice like mine." That was eleven years ago; and the voice she had
acquired since, with its sweet magnetic quality, its clear and easy
articulation, was to him an expression of Deborah's growth. As she took off
her coat and hat in the hall she said, in the same low tone as before,

"Edith has been here, I suppose--"

"Yes--"

"I'm so sorry I missed her. I tried to get home early, but it has been a
busy night."

Her voice sounded tired, comfortably so, and she looked that way as she
came in. Though only a little taller than Edith, she was of a sturdier
build and more decided features. Her mouth was large with a humorous droop
and her face rather broad with high cheekbones. As she put her soft black
hair up over her high forehead, her father noticed her birthmark, a faint
curving line of red running up from between her eyes. Imperceptible as a
rule, it showed when she was tired. In the big school in the tenements
where she had taught for many years, she gave herself hard without stint to
her work, but she had such a good time through it all. She had a way, too,
he reflected, of always putting things in their place. As now she came in
and kissed him and sank back on his leather lounge with a tranquil breath
of relief, she seemed to be dropping school out of her life.

Roger picked up his paper and continued his reading. Presently they would
have a talk, but first he knew that she wanted to lie quite still for a
little while. Vaguely he pictured her work that night, her class-room
packed to bursting with small Jews and Italians, and Deborah at the
blackboard with a long pointer in her hand. The fact that for the last two
years she had been the principal of her school had made little impression
upon him.

And meanwhile, as she lay back with eyes closed, her mind still taut from
the evening called up no simple class-room but far different places--a mass
meeting in Carnegie Hall where she had just been speaking, some schools
which she had visited out in Indiana, a block of tenements far downtown and
the private office of the mayor. For her school had long curious arms these
days.

"Was Bruce here too this evening?" she asked her father presently. Roger
finished what he was reading, then looked over to the lounge, which was in
a shadowy corner.

"Yes, he came in late." And he went on to tell her of Bruce's
"engineering." At once she was interested. Rising on one elbow she
questioned him good-humoredly, for Deborah was fond of Bruce.

"Has he bought that automobile he wanted?"

"No," replied her father. "Edith said they couldn't afford it."

"Why not?"

"This time it's the dentist's bills. Young Betsy's teeth aren't
straightened yet--and as soon as she's been beautified they're going to put
the clamps on George."

"Poor Georgie," Deborah murmured. At the look of pain and disapproval on
her father's heavy face, she smiled quietly to herself. George, who was
Edith's oldest and the worry of her days, was Roger's favorite grandson.
"Has he been bringing home any more sick dogs?"

"No, this time it was a rat--a white one," Roger answered. A glint of dry
relish appeared in his eyes. "George brought it home the other night. He
had on a pair of ragged old pants."

"What on earth--"

"He had traded his own breeches for the rat," said Roger placidly.

"No! Oh, father! Really!" And she sank back laughing on the lounge.

"His school report," said Roger, "was quite as bad as ever."

"Of course it was," said Deborah. And she spoke so sharply that her father
glanced at her in surprise. She was up again on one elbow, and there was an
eager expression on her bright attractive face. "Do you know what we're
going to do some day? We're going to put the rat in the school," Deborah
said impatiently. "We're going to take a boy like George and study him till
we think we know just what interests him most. And if in his case it's
animals, we'll have a regular zoo in school. And for other boys we'll have
other things they really want to know about. And we'll keep them until five
o'clock--when their mothers will have to drag them away." Her father looked
bewildered.

"But arithmetic, my dear."

"You'll find they'll have learned their arithmetic without knowing it,"
Deborah answered.

"Sounds a bit wild," murmured Roger. Again to his mind came the picture of
hordes of little Italians and Jews. "My dear, if I had _your children_ to
teach, I don't think I'd add a zoo," he said. And with a breath of
discomfort he turned back to his reading. He knew that he ought to question
her, to show an interest in her work. But he had a deep aversion for those
millions of foreign tenement people, always shoving, shoving upward through
the filth of their surroundings. They had already spoiled his neighborhood,
they had flowed up like an ocean tide. And so he read his paper, frowning
guiltily down at the page. He glanced up in a little while and saw Deborah
smiling across at him, reading his dislike of such talk. The smile which he
sent back at her was half apologetic, half an appeal for mercy. And Deborah
seemed to understand. She went into the living room, and there at the piano
she was soon playing softly. Listening from his study, again the feeling
came to him of her fresh and abundant vitality. He mused a little enviously
on how it must feel to be strong like that, never really tired.

And while her father thought in this wise, Deborah at the piano, leaning
back with eyes half closed, could feel her tortured nerves relax, could
feel her pulse stop throbbing so and the dull aching at her temples little
by little pass away. She played like this so many nights. Soon she would be
ready for sleep.

       *       *       *       *       *

After she had gone to bed, Roger rose heavily from his chair. By long habit
he went about the house trying the windows and turning out lights. Last he
came to the front door. There were double outer doors with a ponderous
system of locks and bolts and a heavy chain. Mechanically he fastened them
all; and putting out the light in the hall, in the darkness he went up the
stairs. He could so easily feel his way. He put his hand lightly, first on
the foot of the banister, then on a curve in it halfway up, again on the
sharper curve at the top and last on the knob of his bedroom door. And it
was as though these guiding objects came out to meet him like old friends.

In his bedroom, while he slowly undressed, his glance was caught by the
picture upon the wall opposite his bed, a little landscape poster done in
restful tones of blue, of two herdsmen and their cattle far up on a
mountainside in the hour just before the dawn, tiny clear-cut silhouettes
against the awakening eastern sky. So immense and still, this birth of the
day--the picture always gave him the feeling of life everlasting. Judith
his wife had placed it there.

From his bed through the window close beside him he looked up at the
cliff-like wall of the new apartment building, with tier upon tier of
windows from which murmurous voices dropped out of the dark: now soft, now
suddenly angry, loud; now droning, sullen, bitter, hard; now gay with
little screams of mirth; now low and amorous, drowsy sounds. Tier upon tier
of modern homes, all overhanging Roger's house as though presently to crush
it down.

But Roger was not thinking of that. He was thinking of his children--of
Edith's approaching confinement and all her anxious hunting about to find
what was best for her family, of Bruce and the way he was driving himself
in the unnatural world downtown where men were at each other's throats, of
Deborah and that school of hers in the heart of a vast foul region of
tenement buildings swarming with strange, dirty little urchins. And last he
thought of Laura, his youngest daughter, wild as a hawk, gadding about the
Lord knew where. She even danced in restaurants! Through his children he
felt flowing into his house the seething life of this new town. And
drowsily he told himself he must make a real effort, and make it soon, to
know his family better. For in spite of the storm of long ago which had
swept away his faith in God, the feeling had come to him of late that
somewhere, in some manner, he was to meet his wife again. He rarely tried
to think this out, for as soon as he did it became a mere wish, a hungry
longing, nothing more. So he had learned to let it lie, deep down inside of
him. Sometimes he vividly saw her face. After all, who could tell? And she
would want to hear of her children. Yes, he must know them better. Some day
soon he must begin.

Suddenly he remembered that Laura had not yet come home. With a sigh of
discomfort he got out of bed and went downstairs, re-lit the gas in the
hallway, unfastened the locks and the chain at the door. He came back and
was soon asleep. He must have dozed for an hour or two. He was roused by
hearing the front door close and a big motor thundering. And then like a
flash of light in the dark came Laura's rippling laughter.




CHAPTER III


On the next evening, Saturday, while Roger ate his dinner, Laura came to
sit with him. She herself was dining out. That she should have dressed so
early in order to keep him company had caused her father some surprise, and
a faint suspicion entered his mind that she had overdrawn at the bank, as
she had the last time she sat with him like this. Her manner certainly was
a bit strange.

But Roger put the thought aside. Whatever she wanted, Laura was worth it.
In a tingling fashion he felt what a glorious time she was having, what a
gorgeous town she knew. It was difficult to realize she was his own
daughter, this dashing stranger sitting here, playing idly with a knife and
caressing him with her voice and her eyes. The blue evening gown she was
wearing to-night (doubtless not yet paid for) made her figure even more
supple and lithe, set off her splendid bosom, her slender neck, her creamy
skin. Her hair, worn low over her temples, was brown with just a tinge of
red. Her eyes were black, with gleaming lights; her lips were warm and
rich, alive. He did not approve of her lips. Once when she had kissed him
Roger had started slightly back. For his daughter's lips were rouged, and
they had reminded him of his youth. He had asked her sister to speak to
her. But Deborah had told him she did not care to speak to people in that
way--"especially women--especially sisters," she had said, with a quiet
smile. All very well, he reflected, but somebody ought to take Laura in
hand.

She had been his favorite as a child, his pet, his tiny daughter. He
remembered her on his lap like a kitten. How she had liked to cuddle there.
And she had liked to bite his hand, a curious habit in a child. "I hurt
daddy!" He could still recollect the gay little laugh with which she said
that, looking up brightly into his face.

And here she was already grown, and like a light in the sober old house,
fascinating while she disturbed him. He liked to hear her high pitched
voice, gossiping in Deborah's room or in her own dainty chamber chatting
with the adoring maid who was dressing her to go out. He loved her joyous
thrilling laugh. And he would have missed her from the house as he would
have missed Fifth Avenue if it had been dropped from the city. For the
picture Roger had formed of this daughter was more of a symbol than of a
girl, a symbol of the ardent town, spending, wasting, dancing mad. It was
Laura who had kept him living right up to his income.

"Where are you dining to-night?" he asked.

"With the Raymonds." He wondered who they were. "Oh, Sarah," she added to
the maid. "Call up Mrs. Raymond's apartment and ask what time is dinner
to-night."

"Are you going to dance later on?" he inquired.

"Oh, I guess so," she replied. "On the Astor Roof, I think they said--"

Her father went on with his dinner. These hotel dances, he had heard, ran
well into Sunday morning. How Judith would have disapproved. He hesitated
uneasily.

"I don't especially care for this dancing into Sunday," he said. For a
moment he did not look up from his plate. When he did he saw Laura
regarding him.

"Oh, do you mind? I'm sorry. I won't, after this," she answered. And Roger
colored angrily, for the glint of amusement in Laura's mischievous black
eyes revealed quite unmistakably that she regarded both her father and his
feeling for the Sabbath as very dear and quaint and old. Old? Of course he
seemed old to _her_, Roger thought indignantly. For what was Laura but a
child? Did she ever think of anything except having a good time? Had she
ever stopped to think out her own morals, let alone anyone else's? Was she
any judge of what was old--or of _who_ was old? And he determined then and
there to show her he was in his prime. Impatiently he strove to remember
the names of her friends and ask her about them, to show a keen lively
interest in this giddy gaddy life she led. And when that was rather a
failure he tried his daughter next on books, books of the most modern kind.
Stoutly he lied and said he was reading a certain Russian novel of which he
had heard Deborah speak. But this valiant falsehood made no impression
whatever, for Laura had never heard of the book.

"I get so little time for reading," she murmured. And meanwhile she was
thinking, "As soon as he finishes talking, poor dear, I'll break the news."

Then Roger had an audacious thought. He would take her to a play, by
George! Mustering his courage he led up to it by speaking of a play Deborah
had seen, a full-fledged modern drama all centered upon the right of a
woman "to lead her own life." And as he outlined the story, he saw he had
caught his daughter's attention. With her pretty chin resting on one hand,
watching him and listening, she appeared much older, and she seemed
suddenly close to him.

"How would you like to go with me and see it some evening?" he inquired.

"See what, my love?" she asked him, her thoughts plainly far away; and he
looked at her in astonishment:

"That play I've just been speaking of!"

"Why, daddy, I'd love to!" she exclaimed.

"When?" he asked. And he fixed a night. He was proud of himself. Eagerly he
began to talk of opening nights at Wallack's. Roger and Judith, when they
were young, had been great first nighters there. And now it was Laura who
drew him out, and as he talked on she seemed to him to be smilingly trying
to picture it all.... "Now I'd better tell him," she thought.

"Do you remember Harold Sloane?" she asked a little strangely.

"No," replied her father, a bit annoyed at the interruption.

"Why--you've met him two or three times--"

"Have I?" The queer note in her voice made him look up. Laura had risen
from her chair.

"I want you to know him--very soon." There was a moment's silence. "I'm
going to marry him, dad," she said. And Roger looked at her blankly. He
felt his limbs beginning to tremble. "I've been waiting to tell you when we
were alone," she added in an awkward tone. And still staring up at her he
felt a rush of tenderness and a pang of deep remorse. Laura in love and
settled for life! And what did he know of the affair? What had he ever done
for her? Too late! He had begun too late! And this rush of emotion was so
overpowering that while he still looked at her blindly she was the first to
recover her poise. She came around the table and kissed him softly on the
cheek. And now more than ever Roger felt how old his daughter thought him.

"Who is he?" he asked hoarsely. And she answered smiling,

"A perfectly nice young man named Sloane."

"Don't, Laura--tell me! What does he do?"

"He's in a broker's office--junior member of the firm, Oh, you needn't
worry, dear, he can even afford to marry _me_."

They heard a ring at the front door.

"There he is now, I think," she said. "Will you see him? Would you mind?"

"See him? No!" her father cried.

"But just to shake hands," she insisted. "You needn't talk or say a word.
We've only a moment, anyway." And she went swiftly out of the room.

Roger rose in a panic and strode up and down. Before he could recover
himself she was back with her man, or rather her boy--for the fellow, to
her father's eyes, looked ridiculously young. Straight as an arrow,
slender, his dress suit irreproachable, the chap nevertheless was more than
a dandy. He looked hard, as though he trained, and his smooth and ruddy
face had a look of shrewd self-reliance. So much of him Roger fathomed in
the indignant cornered glance with which he welcomed him into the room.

"Why, good evening, Mr. Gale--glad to see you again, sir!" Young Sloane
nervously held out his hand. Roger took it and muttered something. For
several moments, his mind in a whirl, he heard their talk and laughter and
his own voice joining in. Laura seemed enjoying herself, her eyes brimming
with amusement over both her victims. But at last she had compassion,
kissed her father gaily and took her suitor out of the room.

Soon Roger heard them leave the house. He went into his study, savagely bit
off a cigar and gripped his evening paper as though he meant to choke it.
The maid came in with coffee. "Coffee? No!" he snapped at her. A few
moments later he came to his senses and found himself smoking fast and
hard. He heartily damned this fellow Sloane for breaking into the family
and asking poor Laura to risk her whole life--just for his own selfish
pleasure, his whim! Yes, "whim" was the very word for it! Laura's attitude,
too! Did she look at it seriously? Not at all! Quite plainly she saw her
career as one long Highland fling and dance, with this Harry boy as her
partner! Who had he danced with in his past? The fellow's past must be gone
into, and at once, without delay!

Here indeed was a jolt for Roger Gale, a pretty shabby trick of fate. This
was not what he had planned, this was a little way life had of jabbing a
man with surprises. For months he had been slowly and comfortably feeling
his way into the lives of his children, patiently, conscientiously. But
now without a word of warning in popped this young whipper-snapper, turning
the whole house upside down! Another young person to be known, another life
to be dug into, and with pick and shovel too! The job was far from
pleasant. Would Deborah help him? Not at all. She believed in letting
people alone--a devilish easy philosophy! Still, he wanted to tell her at
once, if only to stir her up a bit. He did not propose to bear this alone!
But Deborah was out to-night. Why must she always be out, he asked, in that
infernal zoo school? But no, it was not school to-night. She was dining out
in some café with a tall lank doctor friend of hers. Probably she was to
marry him!

"I'll have that news for breakfast!" Roger smote his paper savagely. Why
couldn't Laura have waited a little? Restlessly he walked the room. Then he
went into the hall, took his hat and a heavy stick which he used for his
night rambles, and walked off through the neighborhood. It was the first
Saturday evening of Spring, and on those quiet downtown streets he met
couples strolling by. A tall thin lad and a buxom girl went into a cheap
apartment building laughing gaily to themselves, and Roger thought of
Laura. A group of young Italians passed, humming "Trovatore," and it put
him in mind of the time when he had ushered at the opera. Would Laura's
young man be willing to usher? More like him to _tango_ down the aisle!

He reached Washington Square feeling tired but even more restless than
before. He climbed to the top of a motor 'bus, and on the lurching ride
uptown he darkly reflected that times had changed. He thought of the Avenue
he had known, with its long lines of hansom cabs, its dashing broughams and
coupés with jingling harness, livened footmen, everything sprucely
up-to-date. How the horses had added to the town. But they were gone, and
in their place were these great cats, these purring motors, sliding softly
by the 'bus. Roger had swift glimpses down into lighted limousines. In one
a big rich looking chap with a beard had a dressy young woman in his arms.
Lord, how he was hugging her! Laura would have a motor like that, kisses
like that, a life like that! She was the kind to go it hard! Ahead as far
as he could see was a dark rolling torrent of cars, lights gleaming by the
thousand. A hubbub of gay voices, cries and little shrieks of laughter
mingled with the blare of horns. He looked at huge shop windows softly
lighted with displays of bedrooms richly furnished, of gorgeous women's
apparel, silks and lacy filmy stuffs. And to Roger, in his mood of anxious
premonition, these bedroom scenes said plainly,

"O come, all ye faithful wives! Come let us adore him, and deck ourselves
to please his eye, to catch his eye, to hold his eye! For marriage is a
game these days!"

Yes, Laura would be a spender, a spender and a speeder too! How much money
had he, that chap? And damn him, what had he in his past? How Roger hated
the very thought of poking into another man's life! Poking where nobody
wanted him! He felt desperately alone. To-night they were dancing, he
recalled, not at a party in somebody's home, but in some flashy public
place where girls of her kind and fancy women gaily mixed together! How
mixed the whole city was getting, he thought, how mad and strange, gone out
of its mind, this city of his children's lives crowding in upon him!




CHAPTER IV


He breakfasted with Deborah late on Sunday morning. He had come down at the
usual hour despite his long tramp of the previous night, for he wanted to
tell her the news and talk it all out before Laura came down--because
Deborah, he hadn't a doubt, with her woman's curiosity had probed deep into
Laura's affairs in the many long talks they had had in her room. He had
often heard them there. And so, as he waited and waited and still his
daughter did not come, Roger grew distinctly annoyed; and when at last she
did appear, his greeting was perfunctory:

"What kept you out so late last night?"

"Oh, I was having a very good time," said Deborah contentedly. She poured
herself some coffee. "I've always wanted," she went on, "to see Laura
really puzzled--downright flabbergasted. And I saw her just like that last
night."

Roger looked up with a jerk of his head:

"You and Laura--together last night?"

"Exactly--on the Astor Roof." At her father's glare of astonishment a look
of quiet relish came over her mobile features. Her wide lips twitched a
little. "Well, why not?" she asked him. "I'm quite a dancer down at school.
And last night with Allan Baird--we were dining together, you know--he
proposed we go somewhere and dance. He's a perfectly awful dancer, and so I
held out as long as I could. But he insisted and I gave in, though I much
prefer the theater."

"Well!" breathed Roger softly. "So you hoof it with the rest!" His
expression was startled and intent. Would he ever get to know these girls?
"Well," he added with a sigh, "I suppose you know what you're about."

"Oh no, I don't," she answered. "I never know what I'm about. If you always
do, you miss so much--you get into a solemn habit of trying nothing till
you're sure. But to return to Laura. As we came gaily down the room we ran
right into her, you see. That's how Allan dances. And when we collided, I
smiled at her sweetly and said, 'Why, hello, dearie--you here too?" And
Deborah sipped her coffee. "I have never believed that the lower jaw of a
well-bred girl could actually drop open. But Laura's did. With a good
strong light, Allan told me, he could have examined her tonsils for her.
Rather a disgusting thought. You see until she saw me there, poor Laura had
me so thoroughly placed--my school-marm job, my tastes and habits,
everything, all cut and dried. She has never once come to my school, and in
every talk we've ever had there has always been some perfectly good and
absorbing reason why we should talk about Laura alone."

"There is now," said her father. He was in no mood for tomfoolery. His
daughter saw it and smiled a little.

"What is it?" she inquired. And then he let her have it!

"Laura wants to get married," he snapped.

Deborah caught her breath at that, and an eager excited expression swept
over her attractive face. She had leaned forward suddenly.

"Father! No! Which one?" she asked. "Tell me! Is it Harold Sloane?"

"It is."

"Oh, dad." She sank back in her chair. "Oh, dad," she repeated.

"What's the matter with Sloane?" he demanded.

"Oh, nothing, nothing--it's all right--"

"It is, eh? How do you know it is?" His anxious eyes were still upon hers,
and he saw she was thinking fast and hard and shutting him completely out.
And it irritated him. "What do you know of this fellow Sloane?"

"Oh, nothing--nothing--"

"Nothing! Humph! Then why do you sit here and say it's all right? Don't
talk like a fool!" he exclaimed. He waited, but she said no more, and
Roger's exasperation increased. "He has money enough apparently--and
they'll spend it like March hares!"

Deborah looked up at him:

"What did Laura tell you, dear?"

"Not very much. I'm only her father. She had a dinner and dance on her
mind."

But Deborah pressed her questions and he gave her brief replies.

"Well, what shall we do about it?" he asked.

"Nothing--until we know something more." Roger regarded her fiercely.

"Why don't you go up and talk to her, then?"

"She's asleep yet--"

"Never mind if she is! If she's going to marry a chap like that and ruin
her life it's high time she was up for her breakfast!"

While he scanned his Sunday paper he heard Deborah in the pantry. She
emerged with a breakfast tray and he saw her start up to Laura's room. She
was there for over an hour. And when she returned to his study, he saw her
eyes were shining. How women's eyes will shine at such times, he told
himself in annoyance.

"Well?" he demanded.

"Better leave her alone to-day," she advised. "Harold is coming some night
soon."

"What for?"

"To have a talk with you."

Her father smote his paper. "What did she tell you about him?" he asked.

"Not much more than she told you. His parents are dead--but he has a rich
widowed aunt in Bridgeport who adores him. They mean to be married the end
of May. She wants a church wedding, bridesmaids, ushers--the wedding
reception here, of course--"

"Oh, Lord," breathed Roger dismally.

"We won't bother you much, father dear--"

"You _will_ bother me much," he retorted. "I propose to be
bothered--bothered a lot! I'm going to look up this fellow Sloane--"

"But let's leave him alone for to-day." She bent over her father
compassionately. "What a night you must have had, poor dear." Roger looked
up in grim reproach.

"You like all this," he grunted. "You, a grown woman, a teacher too."

"I wonder if I do," she said. "I guess I'm a queer person, dad, a curious
family mixture--of Laura and Edith and mother and you, with a good deal of
myself thrown in. But it feels rather good to be mixed, don't you think?
Let's stay mixed as long as we can--and keep together the family."

       *       *       *       *       *

That afternoon, to distract him, Deborah took her father to a concert in
Carnegie Hall. She had often urged him to go of late, but despite his
liking for music Roger had refused before, simply because it was a change.
But why balk at going anywhere now, when Laura was up to such antics at
home?

"Do you mind climbing up to the gallery?" Deborah asked as they entered the
hall.

"Not at all," he curtly answered. He did mind it very much!

"Then we'll go to the very top," she said. "It's a long climb but I want
you to see it. It's so different up there."

"I don't doubt it," he replied. And as they made the slow ascent, pettishly
he wondered why Deborah must always be so eager for queer places.
Galleries, zoo schools, tenement slums--why not take a two dollar seat in
life?

Deborah seated him far down in the front of the great gallery, over at the
extreme right, and from here they could look back and up at a huge dim
arena of faces.

"Now watch them close," she whispered. "See what the music does to them."

As the symphony began below the faces all grew motionless. And as the music
cast its spell, the anxious ruffled feelings which had been with Roger all
that day little by little were dispelled, and soon his imagination began to
work upon this scene. He saw many familiar American types. He felt he knew
what they had been doing on Sundays only a few years before. After church
they had eaten large Sunday dinners. Then some had napped and some had
walked and some had gone to Sunday school. At night they had had cold
suppers, and afterwards some had gone back to church; while others, as in
Roger's house in the days when Judith was alive, had gathered around the
piano for hymns. Young men callers, friends of their daughters, had joined
in the family singing. Yes, some of these people had been like that. To
them, a few short years ago, a concert on the Sabbath would have seemed a
sacrilege. He could almost hear from somewhere the echo of "Abide With Me."

But over this memory of a song rose now the surging music of Tschaikovsky's
"Pathetique." And the yearnings and fierce hungers in this tumultuous music
swept all the hymns from Roger's mind. Once more he watched the gallery,
and this time he became aware that more than half were foreigners. Out of
the mass from every side individual faces emerged, swarthy, weird, and
staring hungrily into space. And to Roger the whole shadowy place, the very
air, grew pregnant, charged with all these inner lives bound together in
this mood, this mystery that had swept over them all, immense and
formless, baffling, this furious demanding and this blind wistful groping
which he himself had known so well, ever since his wife had died and he had
lost his faith in God. What was the meaning of it all if life were nothing
but a start, and there were nothing but the grave?

"You will live on in our children's lives."

He glanced around at Deborah. Was _she_ so certain, so serene? "What do I
know of her?" he asked. "Little or nothing," he sadly replied. And he tried
to piece together from things she had told him her life as it had passed
him by. Had there been no questionings, no sharp disillusionments? There
must have been. He recalled irritabilities, small acts and exclamations of
impatience, boredom, "blues." And as he watched her he grew sure that his
daughter's existence had been like his own. Despite its different setting,
its other aims and visions, it had been a mere beginning, a feeling for a
foothold, a search for light and happiness. And Deborah seemed to him still
a child. "How far will _you_ go?" he wondered.

Although he was still watching her even after the music had ceased, she did
not notice him for a time. Then she turned to him slowly with a smile.

"Well? What did you see?" she asked.

"I wasn't looking," he replied.

"Why, dearie," she retorted. "Where's that imagination of yours?"

"It was with you," he answered. "Tell me what you were thinking."

And still under the spell of the music, Deborah said to her father,

"I was thinking of hungry people--millions of them, now, this minute--not
only here but in so many places--concerts, movies, libraries. Hungry, oh,
for everything--life, its beauty, all it means. And I was thinking this is
youth--no matter how old they happen to be--and that to feed it we have
schools. I was thinking how little we've done as yet, and of all that
we're so sure to do in the many, many years ahead. Do you see what I mean?"
she squeezed his hand.

"Welcome back to school," she said, "back into the hungry army of youth!...
Sh-h-h!"

Again the music had begun. And sitting by her side he wondered whether it
was because she knew that Laura's affair had made him feel old that Deborah
had brought him here.

       *       *       *       *       *

They went to Edith's for supper.

The Cunninghams' apartment was on the west side, well uptown. It was not
the neighborhood which Edith would have chosen, for nearly all the nice
people she knew lived east of the park. But rents were somewhat lower here
and there was at least an abundance of fresh air for her family. Edith had
found that her days were full of these perplexing decisions. It was all
very simple to resolve that her children be old-fashioned, normal,
wholesome, nice. But then she looked into the city--into schools and
kindergartens, clothes and friends and children's parties, books and plays.
And through them all to her dismay she felt conflicting currents, clashes
between old and new. She felt New York. And anxiously she asked herself,
"What is old-fashioned? What is normal? What is wholesome? What is nice?"
Cautiously she made her way, testing and comparing, trying small
experiments. Often sharply she would draw in her horns. She had struck
something "common!" And she knew all this was nothing compared to the
puzzles that lay ahead. For from her friend, Madge Deering, whose girls
were well along in their 'teens, she heard of deeper problems. The girls
were so inquisitive. Dauntlessly Madge was facing each month the most
disturbing questions. Thank Heaven, Edith had only one daughter. Sons were
not quite so baffling.

So she had groped her way along.

When her father and Deborah arrived, placidly she asked them what they had
been doing. And when she heard that they had been at a concert on the
Sabbath, though this was far from old-fashioned and something she would not
have done herself, it did not bother her half so much as the fact that
Hannah, the Irish nurse, had slapped little Tad that afternoon. She had
never known Hannah to do it before. Could it be that the girl was tired or
sick? Perhaps she needed a few days off. "I must have a talk with her,"
Edith thought, "as soon as father and Deborah go."

Roger always liked to come here. Say what you would about Edith's habit of
keeping too closely to her home, the children to whom she had devoted
herself were a fine, clean, happy lot. Here were new lives in his family,
glorious fresh beginnings. He sat on the floor with her three boys,
watching the patient efforts of George to harness his perturbed white rat
to Tad's small fire engine. George was a lank sprawling lad of fourteen,
all legs and arms and elbows, with rumpled hair and freckled face, a quick
bright smile and nice brown eyes--frank, simple, understandable eyes. All
but one of Edith's children were boys, and boys were a blessed relief to a
man who had three grown-up daughters.

And while Roger watched them, with a gentle glow of anticipation he waited
for what should follow, when as had been already arranged Deborah should
break to her sister the news of Laura's engagement. And he was not
disappointed. The change in Edith was something tremendous. Until now so
quietly self-absorbed, at the news that Laura was to be married instantly
she was all alert. Sitting there in the midst of her children and facing a
time of agony only a few weeks ahead which would add one more to her
family, Edith's pretty florid face grew flushed and radiant as she
exclaimed,

"What a perfectly wonderful thing for Laura! Now if only she can have a
child!"

Her questions followed thick and fast, and with them her thoughts of what
should be done. Bruce must look up this suitor at once. Bruce demurred
stoutly but without avail. She eagerly questioned her sister as to Laura's
plans for the wedding, but plainly she considered that Deborah was no woman
to give her the full information she wanted. She must see Laura herself at
once. For though she had thoroughly disapproved of the gay helter-skelter
existence of her youngest sister, still Laura was now to be married, and
this made all the difference.

Just before Roger and Deborah left, Edith drew her father aside, and with a
curious concern and pity in her voice, she said,

"I'm so sorry I shan't be able to help you with the wedding, dear, and make
it the sweet old-fashioned kind that mother would have wanted. Of course
there's Deborah, she'll be there. But her head is so full of new ideas. I'm
afraid she may find the house rather a burden after Laura has gone away."
Edith gave a worried little sigh. "I'll be so glad," she added, "when we
get that place in Morristown. We'll want you out there often, and for good
long visits too. You may even find you'll care to try staying there with us
for a while."

Roger scowled and thanked her. She had given him a shock of alarm.

"So she thinks that Deborah will find the housekeeping too hard," he
reflected anxiously. And as he walked home with his daughter, he kept
glancing at her face, which for all its look of quiet had so much tensity
beneath. She had packed her life so full of school. What if she wanted to
give up their home? "She'll try, of course, she'll try her best--but she'll
find it too much of an added strain." And again he felt that sickening
dread. Deborah said nothing. He felt as though they had drifted apart.

And at night in his bed, as Roger stared up at the beetling cliff of
apartment windows just outside, drearily he asked himself how it would feel
to live like that.




CHAPTER V


One afternoon a few days later Roger was riding in the park. He rode
"William," a large lazy cob who as he advanced in age had so subtly and
insidiously slackened his pace from a trot to a jog that Roger barely
noticed how slowly he was riding. As he rode along he liked to watch the
broad winding bridle path with its bobbing procession of riders that kept
appearing before him under the tall spreading trees. Though he knew
scarcely anyone by name, he was a familiar figure here and he recognized
scores of faces. To many men he nodded at passing, and to not a few
alluring young dames, ardent creatures with bright eyes who gave him smiles
of greeting, Roger gravely raised his hat. One was "The Silver Lady" in a
Broadway musical show, but he thought she was "one of the Newport crowd."
He liked to make shrewd guesses like that. There were so many kinds of
people here. There were stout anxious ladies riding for figures and lean
morose gentlemen riding for health. There were joyous care-free girls,
chatting and laughing merrily. There were some gallant foreigners, and
there were riding masters, and Roger could not tell them apart. There were
mad boys from the Squadron who rode at a furious canter, and there were
groups of children, eager and flushed, excited and gay, with stolid grooms
behind them. The path in several places ran close beside the main road of
the park, and with the coming of the dusk this road took on deep purple
hues and glistened with reflections from countless yellow motor eyes. And
from the polished limousines, sumptuous young women smiled out upon the
riders.

At least so Roger saw this life. And after those bleak lonely years
confronted by eternity, it was good to come here and forget, to feel
himself for the moment a part of the thoughtless gaiety, the ease and
luxury of the town. Here he was just on the edge of it all. Often as a
couple passed he would wonder what they were doing that night. In the
riding school where he kept his horse, it was a lazy pleasure to have the
English "valet" there pull off his boots and breeches--though if anyone had
told him so, Roger would have denied it with indignation and surprise. For
was he not an American?

It had been a wonderful tonic, a great idea of Laura's, this forcing him up
here to ride. In one of her affectionate moods, just after a sick spell he
had been through, his gay capricious daughter had insisted that he have his
horse brought down from the mountains. She had promised to ride with him
herself, and she had done so--for a week. Since then he had often met her
here with one of her many smart young men. What a smile of greeting would
flash on her face--when Laura happened to notice him.

He was thinking of Laura now, and there was an anxious gleam in his eyes.
For young Sloane was coming to dinner to-night. What was he going to say to
the fellow? Bruce had learned that Sloane played polo, owned and drove a
racing car and was well liked in his several clubs. But what about women
and his past? Edith had urged her father to go through the lad's life with
a fine tooth comb, and if he should find anything there to kick up no end
of a row for the honor of the family. All of which was nothing but words,
reflected Roger pettishly. It all came to this, that he had a most ticklish
evening ahead! On the path as a rider greeted him, his reply was a dismal
frown.

       *       *       *       *       *

Laura's suitor arrived at six o'clock. In his study Roger heard the bell,
listened a moment with beating heart, then raised himself heavily from his
chair and went into the hallway.

"Ah, yes! It's you!" he exclaimed, with a nervous cordiality. "Come in, my
boy, come right in! Here, let me help you with your coat. I don't know just
where Laura is. Ahem!" He violently cleared his throat. "Suppose while
we're waiting we have a smoke." He kept it up back into his den. There the
suitor refused a cigar and carefully lit a cigarette. Roger noticed again
how young the chap was, and marriage seemed so ridiculous! All this
feverish trouble was for something so unreal!

"Well, sir," the candidate blurted forth, "I guess I'd better come right to
the point. Mr. Gale, I want to marry your daughter."

"Laura?"

"Yes." Roger cursed himself. Why had he asked, "Laura?" Of course it was
Laura! Would this cub be wanting Deborah?

"Well, my boy," he said thickly. "I--I wish I knew you better."

"So do I, sir. Suppose we begin." The youth took a quick pull at his
cigarette. He waited, stirred nervously in his seat. "You'll have some
questions to ask, I suppose--"

"Yes, there are questions." Roger had risen mechanically and was slowly
walking the room. He threw out short gruff phrases. "I'm not interested in
your past--I don't care about digging into a man--I never have and I never
will--except as it might affect my daughter. That's the main question, I
suppose. Can you make her happy?"

"I think so," said Sloane, decidedly. Roger gave him a glance of
displeasure.

"That's a large order, young man," he rejoined.

"Then let's take it in sections," the youngster replied. Confound his
boyish assurance! "To begin with," he was saying, "I rather think I have
money enough. We'd better go into that, hadn't we?"

"Yes," said Roger indifferently. "We might as well go into it." Of course
the chap had money enough. He was a money maker. You could hear it in his
voice; you could see it in his jaw, in his small aggressive blonde
moustache. Now he was telling briefly of his rich aunt in Bridgeport, of
the generous start she had given him, his work downtown, his income.

"Twenty-two thousand this year," he said. "We can live on that all right, I
guess."

"You won't starve," was the dry response. Roger walked for a moment in
silence, then turned abruptly on young Sloane.

"Look here, young man, I don't want to dig," he continued very huskily.
"But I know little or nothing of what may be behind you. I don't care to
ask you about it now--unless it can make trouble."

"It can't make trouble." At this answer, low but sharp, Roger wheeled and
shot a glance into those clear and twinkling eyes. And his own eyes gleamed
with pain. Laura had been such a little thing in the days when she had been
his pet, the days when he had known her well. What could he do about it?
This was only the usual thing. But he felt suddenly sick of life.

"How soon do you want to get married?" he demanded harshly.

"Next month, if we can."

"Where are you going?"

"Abroad," said Sloane. Roger caught at this topic as at a straw. Soon they
were talking of the trip, and the tension slackened rapidly. He had never
been abroad himself but had always dreamed of going there. With maps and
books of travel Judith and he had planned it out. In imagination they had
lived in London and Paris, Munich and Rome, always in queer old lodgings
looking on quaint crooked streets. He had dreamed of long delicious
rambles, glimpses into queer old shops, vast, silent, dark cathedrals. For
Laura how different it would be. This boy of hers knew Europe as a group
of gorgeous new hotels.

The moment Laura joined them, her father's eye was caught and held by the
ring upon her finger. Roger knew rings, they were his hobby, and this huge
yellow solitaire in its new and brilliant setting at once awakened his
dislike. It just fitted the life they were to lead! What life? As he
listened to his daughter he kept wondering if she were so sure. Had she
felt no uneasiness? She must have, he decided, for all her gay excitement.
One Laura in that smiling face; another Laura deep inside, doubting and
uncertain, reaching for her happiness, now elated, now dismayed,
exclaiming, "Now at last I'm starting!" Oh, what an ignorant child she was.
He wanted to cry out to her, "You'll _always_ be just starting! You'll
never be sure, you'll never be happy, you'll always be just beginning to
be! And the happier you are, the more you will feel it is only a start!...
And then-"

More and more his spirit withdrew from these two heedless children. Later
on, when Deborah came, he barely noticed her meeting with Sloane. And
through dinner, while they talked of plans for the wedding, the trip
abroad, still Roger took no part at all. He felt dull and heavy. Deborah
too, he noticed, after her first efforts to be welcoming and friendly, had
gradually grown silent. He saw her watching Laura with a mingled look of
affection and of whimsical dismay. Soon after dinner she left them, and
Roger smoked with the boy for a while and learned that he was twenty-nine.
Both had grown uneasy and rather dull with each other. It was a relief when
again Laura joined them, dressed to go out. She and her lover left the
house.

Roger sat motionless for some time. His cigar grew cold unheeded. One of
the sorrows of his life had been that his only son had died. Bruce had been
almost like a son. But this young man of Laura's? No.

Later he went for his evening walk. And as though drawn by invisible
chains he strayed far down into the ghetto. Soon he was elbowing his way
through a maze of uproarious tenement streets as one who had been there
many times. But he noticed little around him. He went on, as he had always
gone, seeing and hearing this seething life only as a background to his own
adventure. He reached his destination. Pushing his way through a swarm of
urchins playing in front of a pawnshop, he entered and was a long time
inside, and when he came out again at last the whole expression of his face
had undergone a striking change. As one who had found the solace he needed
for the moment, his pace unconsciously quickened and he looked about him
with brighter eyes.

Around the corner from his home, he went into a small jewelry shop, a
remnant of the town of the past. There were no customers in the place, and
the old Galician jeweler sat at the back playing solitaire. At sight of
Roger he arose; and presently in a small back room, beneath the glare of a
powerful lamp, the two were studying the ring which Roger had found in the
ghetto that night. It was plain, just a thin worn band of gold with an
emerald by no means large; but the setting was old and curious, and
personal, distinctive. Somebody over in Europe had worked on it long and
lovingly. Now as the Galician gently rubbed and polished and turned the
ring this way and that, the light revealed crude tiny figures, a man and a
woman under a tree. And was that a vine or a serpent? They studied it long
and absorbedly.

At home, up in his bedroom, Roger opened a safe which stood in one corner,
took out a large shallow tray and sat down with it by his lamp. A strange
array of rings was there, small and delicate, huge, bizarre; great signet
rings and poison rings, love tokens, charms and amulets, rings which had
been worn by wives, by mistresses, by favorite slaves and by young girls in
convents; rings with the Madonna and rings with many other saints graven
on large heavy stones; rings French and Russian, Polish, Italian, Spanish,
Syrian. Some were many centuries old. In nine shallow metal trays they
filled the safe in Roger's room. Although its money value was small, the
Gale collection was well known to a scattered public of connoisseurs, and
Roger took pride in showing it. But what had always appealed to him most
was the romance, the mystery, stored up in these old talismans that had
lived so many ages, travelled through so many lands, decked so many
fingers. Roger had found every one of them in the pawnshops of New York.
What new recruits to America had brought them here and pawned them? From
what old cities had they come? What passions of love and jealousy, of
hatred, faith, devotion were in this glittering array? Roger's own love
affair had been deep, but quiet and even and happy. All the wild
adventures, the might-have-beens in his sex life, were gathered in these
dusky trays with their richly colored glints of light.

Of his daughters, Laura had been the one most interested in his rings, and
so he thought of Laura now as he placed in the tray the new ring he had
bought, the one he would have liked for her. But a vague uneasiness filled
his mind, for he knew she had the same craving as he for what gleamed out
of these somber trays. The old Galician jeweler had long been quite a
friend of hers, she had often dropped in at his shop to ask him curious
questions about his women patrons. And it was just this side of him that
Roger did not care for. So many of those women were from a dubious
glittering world, and the old Galician took a weird vicarious joy in many
of the gay careers into which he sent his beloved rings, his brooches,
earrings, necklaces, his clasps and diamond garters. And Laura loved to
make him talk.... Yes, she was her father's child, a part of himself. He,
too, had had his yearnings, his burning curiosities, his youthful ventures
into the town. "You will live on in our children's lives." With her
inheritance what would she do? Would she stop halfway as he had done, or
would she throw all caution aside and let the flames within her rise?

He heard a step in the doorway, and Deborah stood there smiling.

"A new one?" she inquired. He nodded, and she bent over the tray. "Poor
father," Deborah murmured. "I saw you eyeing Laura's engagement ring at
dinner to-night. It wasn't like this one, was it?" He scowled:

"I don't like what I see ahead of her. Nor do you," he said. "Be honest."
She looked at him perplexedly.

"We can't stop it, can we? And even if we could," she said, "I'm not quite
sure I'd want to. It's her love affair, not yours or mine--grown out of a
life she made for herself--curious, eager, thrilled by it all--and in the
center of her soul the deep glad growing certainty, 'I'm going to be a
beautiful woman--I myself, I, Laura Gale!' Oh, you don't know--nor do I.
And so she felt her way along--eagerly, hungrily, making mistakes--and you
and I left her to do it alone. I'm afraid we both rather neglected her,
dad," Deborah ended sadly. "And all we can do now, I think, is to give her
the kind of wedding she wants."

Roger started to speak but hesitated.

"What is it?" she inquired.

"Queer," he answered gruffly, "how a man can neglect his children--as I
have done, as I do still--when the one thing he wants most in life is to
see each one of 'em happy."




CHAPTER VI


Roger soon grew accustomed to seeing young Sloane about the house. They
could talk together more easily, and he began to call him Harold. Harold
asked him with Laura to lunch at the Ritz to meet the aunt from Bridgeport,
a lady excessively stout and profound. But that ended the formalities. It
had all been so much easier than Roger had expected. So, in its calm sober
fashion, the old house took into its life this new member, these new plans,
and the old seemed stronger for the new--for Laura and Edith and Deborah
drew together closer than they had been in many years. But only because
they felt themselves on the eve of a still deeper and more lasting
separation, as the family of Roger Gale divided and went different ways. At
times he noticed it sadly. Laura, who had scarcely ever been home for
dinner, now spent many evenings here. She needed her home for her wedding,
he thought. Each daughter needed it now and then. But as the years wore
slowly on, the seasons when they needed it grew steadily wider and wider
apart....

Early in May, when Roger came home from his office one night he found
Edith's children in the house. From the hallway he could hear their gay
excited voices, and going into the dining room he found them at their
supper. Deborah was with them, and at once her father noticed how much
younger she appeared--as she always did with these children who all
idolized her so. She rose and followed him into the hall, and her quiet
voice had a note of compassion.

"Edith's baby is coming," she said.

"Good Lord. Is anything wrong?" he asked.

"No, no, it's all right--"

"But I thought the child wasn't due for three weeks."

"I know, and poor Edith is fearfully worried. It has upset all her plans.
I'd go up and see her if I were you. Your supper is ready; and if you like
you can have it with the children."

There followed a happy boisterous meal, with much expectant chatter about
the long summer so soon to begin at the farm up in the mountains. George,
whose hair was down over his eyes, rumpled it back absorbedly as he told of
a letter he had received from his friend Dave Royce, Roger's farmer, with
whom George corresponded. One of the cows was to have a calf, and George
was anxious to get there in time.

"I've never seen a real new calf, new absolutely," he explained. "And I
want a look at this one the very minute that he's born. Gee, I hope we can
get there in time--"

"Gee! So do I!" cried Bobby aged nine. And then Tad, the chubby
three-year-old who had been intently watching his brothers, slowly took the
spoon from his mouth and in his grave sweet baby voice said very softly,
"Gee." At her end of the table, Elizabeth, blonde and short and rather
plump, frowned and colored slightly. For she was eleven and she knew there
was something dark and shameful about the way calves appear in barns. And
so, with a quick conscious cough, she sweetly interrupted:

"Oh, Aunt Deborah! Won't you please tell us about--about--"

"About--about," jeered the ironical George. "About what, you little ninny?"
Poor Elizabeth blushed desperately. She was neither quick nor resourceful.

"Now, George," said his aunt warningly.

"Wasn't I talking?" the boy rejoined. "And didn't Betsy butt right
in--without even a thing to butt in about? About--about," he jeered again.

"About Paris!" cried his sister, successful at last in her frantic search
for a proper topic of conversation. "Aunt Deborah's trip to Paris!"

"How many times has she told it already?" her brother replied with
withering scorn. "And anyhow, I was talking of cows!"

"Very well," said his aunt, "we'll talk about cows, some cows I saw on a
lovely old farm in a little village over in France."

"There!" cried his young sister. "Did she ever tell of _that_ part of her
trip?" And she made a little face at her brother.

"I don't care," he answered doggedly. "She has told about Paris lots of
times--and that was what _you_ wanted. Yes, you did. You said, 'About
Paris.' Didn't she, Bob?"

"You bet she did," young Bob agreed.

"Now, children, children, what does it matter?"

"All right, go ahead with your barn in France," said George with patient
tolerance. "Did they have any Holsteins?"

Soon the questions were popping from every side, while little Tad beamed
from one to the other. To Tad it was all so wonderful, to be having supper
away from home, to be here, to go to bed upstairs, to take part perhaps in
a pillow fight.... And glancing at the glowing face and the parted lips of
his small grandson Roger felt a current of warm new life pour into his
soul.

Early in the evening he went up to Edith's apartment. He found his daughter
in her room, looking flushed and very tense. He took her arm and they
walked for a time. A trained nurse was soaping the windows. Roger asked the
reason for this and was told that in case the baby did not come till
morning the doctor wanted to pull up the shades in order to work by
daylight. "And neighbors in New York are such cats! You've no idea!" said
Edith. She looked out at the numberless windows crowding close about her
home, and she fairly bristled with scorn. "Oh, how I loathe apartments!"

"They seem to have come to stay, my dear. In a few years more New York will
be a city without a house," he said. "Only a palace here and there." The
thought flashed in his mind, "But I shall be gone."

"Then we'll move out to the country!" she cried. Still walking the floor
with her father, she talked of the perplexities which in her feverish state
of mind had loomed suddenly enormous. She had planned everything so nicely
for the baby to come the first of June, but now her plans were all upset.
She did not want the children here, it would make too much confusion. They
had much better go up to the mountains, even though George and Elizabeth
lost their last few weeks at school. But who could she find to take them?
Bruce was simply rushed to death with his new receivership. Laura was
getting her trousseau. Deborah, said Edith, had time for nothing on earth
but school.

"Suppose I take them," Roger ventured. But she only smiled at this. "My
dear," he urged, "your nurse will be with me, and when we arrive there's
the farmer's wife." But Edith impatiently shook her head. Her warm bright
eyes seemed to picture it all, hour by hour, day and night, her children
there without her.

"You poor dear," she told him, "you haven't the slightest idea what it
means. The summer train is not on yet, and you have to change three times
on the way--with all the children--luggage, too. And there are their naps,
and all their meals. You don't arrive till late at night. No," she decided
firmly, "Bruce will simply have to go." She drew a breath of discomfort.
"You go and talk to him," she said.

"I will, my dear." Roger looked at his daughter in deep concern. Awkwardly
his heavy hand touched her small plump shoulder, and he felt the constant
quivering there. "Now, now," he muttered, uneasily, "it's going to be all
right, you know--" And at that she gave him a rapid glance out of those
warm hunted eyes, as though to ask, "What do you know of this?" And Roger
flinched and turned to the door.

Bruce was working at his desk, with an old briar pipe in his teeth. He
looked up with a quick nervous smile which showed his dread of the coming
ordeal, but his voice had a carefully casual tone.

"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 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 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
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!"

With a pang of utter loneliness amid these vexing problems, Roger felt it
crowding in, this city of his children's lives. As he strode on down
Broadway, an old hag selling papers thrust one in his face and he caught a
glimpse of a headline. Some bigwig woman re-divorced. How about Laura's
"experiment"? A mob of street urchins nearly upset him. How about Deborah?
How about children? How about schools, education, the country? How about
God? Was anyone thinking? Had anyone time? What a racket it made,
slam-banging along. The taxis and motor trucks thundered and brayed, dark
masses of people swept endlessly by, as though their very souls depended on
their dinners or their jobs, their movies, roaring farces, thrills, their
harum scarum dances, clothes. A plump little fool of a woman, her skirt so
tight she could barely walk, tripped by on high-heeled slippers. That was
it, he told himself, the whole city was high-heeled! No solid footing
anywhere! And, good Lord, how they chattered!

He turned into a less noisy street. What would Judith want if she were
here? It became disturbingly clear to him that she would undoubtedly wish
him to have a talk with Laura now, find out if she'd really made up her
mind not to have any children, and if so to tell her plainly that she was
not only going against her God but risking her own happiness. For though
Judith had been liberal about any number of smaller things, she had been
decidedly clear on this. Yes, he must talk to Laura.

"And she'll tell me," he reflected, "that Edith put me up to it!"

If only his oldest daughter would leave the other girls alone! Here she was
planning a row with Deborah over whether poor young George should be
allowed to play with rats! It was all so silly!... Yes, his three children
were drifting apart, each one of them going her separate way. And he rather
took comfort in the thought, for at least it would stop their wrangling.
But again he pulled himself up with a jerk. No, certainly Judith would not
have liked this. If she'd ever stood for anything, it was for keeping the
family together. It had been the heart and center of their last talks
before she died.

His face relaxed as he walked on, but in his eyes was a deeper pain. If
only Judith could be here. Before he reached home he had made up his mind
to talk with Laura that very night. He drew out his latchkey, opened his
door, shut it firmly and strode into his house. In the hall they were
putting down the new carpet. Cautiously picking his way upstairs, he
inquired for Laura and was told she was dressing for dinner. He knocked at
her door.

"Yes?" came her voice.

"It's I," he said, "your father."

"Oh, hello, dad," came the answer gaily, in that high sweet voice of hers.
"I'm frightfully rushed. It's a dinner dance to-night for the bridesmaids
and the ushers." Roger felt a glow of relief. "Come in a moment, won't
you?"

What a resplendent young creature she was, seated at her dresser. Behind
her the maid with needle and thread was swiftly mending a little tear in
the fluffy blue tulle she was wearing. The shaded light just over her head
brought a shimmer of red in her sleek brown hair. What lips she had, what a
bosom. She drew a deep breath and smiled at him.

"What are you doing to-morrow night?" her father asked her.

"Oh, dad, my love, we have every evening filled and crammed right up to the
wedding," she replied. "No--the last evening I'll be here. Hal's giving his
ushers a dinner that night."

"Good. I want to talk to you, my dear." He felt his voice solemn, a great
mistake. He saw the quick glance from her luminous eyes.

"All right, father--whenever you like."

Much embarrassed Roger left the room.

The few days which remained were a crowding confusion of dressmakers, gowns
and chattering friends and gifts arriving at all hours. As a part of his
resolve to do what he could for his daughter, Roger stayed home from his
office that week. But all he could do was to unpack boxes, take out
presents and keep the cards, and say, "Yes, my dear, it's very nice. Where
shall I put this one?" As the array of presents grew, from time to time
unconsciously he glanced at the engagement ring upon Laura's finger. And
all the presents seemed like that. They would suit her apartment
beautifully. He'd be glad when they were out of the house.

The only gift that appealed to his fancy was a brooch, neither rich nor
new, a genuine bit of old jewelry. But rather to his annoyance he learned
that it had been sent to Laura by the old Galician Jew in the shop around
the corner. It recalled to his mind the curious friendship which had
existed for so long between the old man and his daughter. And as she turned
the brooch to the light Roger thought he saw in her eyes anticipations
which made him uneasy. Yes, she was a child of his. "June in Paris--"
other Junes--"experiments"--no children. Again he felt he must have that
talk. But, good Lord, how he dreaded it.

The house was almost ready now, dismantled and made new and strange. It was
the night before the wedding. Laura was taking her supper in bed. What was
he going to say to her? He ate his dinner silently. At last he rose with
grim resolution.

"I think I'll go up and see her," he said. Deborah quickly glanced at him.

"What for?" she asked.

"Oh, I just want to talk to her--"

"Don't stay long," she admonished him. "I've a masseuse coming at nine
o'clock to get the child in condition to rest. Her nerves are rather tense,
you know."

"How about mine?" he said to himself as he started upstairs. "Never mind,
I've got to tackle it."

Laura saw what he meant to say the moment that he entered the room, and the
tightening of her features made it all the harder for Roger to think
clearly, to remember the grave, kind, fatherly things which he had intended
to tell her.

"I don't want to talk of the wedding, child, but of what's coming after
that--between you and this man--all your life." He stopped short, with his
heart in his mouth, for although he did not look at her he had a quick
sensation as though he had struck her in the face.

"Isn't this rather late to speak about that? Just now? When I'm nervous
enough as it is?"

"I know, I know." He spoke hurriedly, humbly. "I should have talked to you
long ago, I should have known you better, child. I've been slack and
selfish. But it's better late than never."

"But you needn't!" the girl exclaimed. "You needn't tell me anything! I
know more than you think--I know enough!" Roger looked at her, then at the
wall. She went on in a voice rather breathless: "I know what I'm
doing--exactly--just what I'm getting into. It's not as it was when you
were young--it's different--we talk of these things. Harold and I have
talked it all out." In the brief and dangerous pause which followed Roger
kept looking at the wall.

"Have you talked--about having children?"

"Yes," came the answer sharply, and then he felt the hot clutch of her
hand. "Hadn't you better go now, dad?" He hesitated.

"No," he said. His voice was low. "Do you mean to have children, Laura?"

"I don't know."

"I think you do know. Do you mean to have children?" Her big black eyes,
dilating, were fixed defiantly on his own.

"Well then, no, I don't!" she replied. He made a desperate effort to think
what he could say to her. Good God, how he was bungling! Where were all his
arguments?

"How about your religion?" he blurted out.

"I haven't any--which makes me do that--I've a right to be happy!"

"You haven't!" His voice had suddenly changed. In accent and in quality it
was like a voice from the heart of New England where he had been born and
bred. "I mean you won't be happy--not unless you have a child! It's what
you need--it'll fill your life! It'll settle you--deepen you--tone you
down!"

"Suppose I don't want to be toned down!" The girl was almost hysterical.
"I'm no Puritan--I want to live! I tell you we are different now! We're not
all like Edith--and we're not like our mothers! We want to live! And we
have a right to! Why don't you go? Can't you see I'm nearly crazy? It's my
last night, my very last! I don't want to talk to you--I don't even know
what I'm saying! And you come and try to frighten me!" Her voice caught
and broke into sobs. "You know nothing about me! You never did! Leave me
alone, can't you--leave me alone!"

"Father?" He heard Deborah's voice, abrupt and stern, outside the door.

"I'm sorry," he said hoarsely. He went in blind fashion out of the room and
down to his study. He lit a cigar and smoked wretchedly there. When
presently Deborah appeared he saw that her face was set and hard; but as
she caught the baffled look, the angry tortured light in his eyes, her own
expression softened.

"Poor father," she said, in a pitying way. "If Edith had only let you
alone."

"I certainly didn't do much good."

"Of course you didn't--you did harm--oh, so much more harm than you know."
Into the quiet voice of his daughter crept a note of keen regret. "I wanted
to make her last days in this house a time she could look back on, so that
she'd want to come home for help if ever she's in trouble. She has so
little--don't you see?--of what a woman needs these days. She has grown up
so badly. Oh, if you'd only let her alone. It was such a bad, bad time to
choose." She went to her father and kissed him. "Well, it's over now," she
said, "and we'll make the best we can of it. I'll tell her you're sorry and
quiet her down. And to-morrow we'll try to forget it has happened."

       *       *       *       *       *

For Roger the morrow went by in a whirl. The wedding, a large church
affair, was to take place at twelve o'clock. He arose early, put on his
Prince Albert, went down and ate his breakfast alone. The waitress was
flustered, the coffee was burnt. He finished and anxiously wandered about.
The maids were bustling in and out, with Deborah giving orders pellmell.
The caterers came trooping in. The bridesmaids were arriving and hurrying
up to Roger's room. That place was soon a chaos of voices, giggles, peals
of laughter. Laura's trunks were brought downstairs, and Roger tagged them
for the ship, one for the cabin and three for the hold, and saw them into
the wagon. Then he strode distractedly everywhere, till at last he was
hustled by Deborah into a taxi waiting outside.

"It's all going so smoothly," Deborah said, and a faint sardonic glimmer
came into her father's hunted eyes. Deborah was funny!

Soon he found himself in the church. He heard whispers, eager voices, heard
one usher say to another, "God, what a terrible head I've got!" And Roger
glared at him for that. Plainly these youngsters, all mere boys, had been
up with the groom a good part of the night.... But here was Laura, pale and
tense. She smiled at him and squeezed his hand. There was silence, then the
organ, and now he was taking her up the aisle. Strange faces stared. His
jaw set hard. At last they reached the altar. An usher quickly touched his
arm and he stepped back where he belonged. He listened but understood
nothing. Just words, words and motions.

"If any man can show just cause why they may not be lawfully joined
together, let him now speak or else hereafter forever hold his peace."

"No," thought Roger, "I won't speak."

Just then he caught sight of Deborah's face, and at the look in her steady
gray eyes all at once he could feel the hot tears in his own.

At the wedding breakfast he was gay to a boisterous degree. He talked to
strange women and brought them food, took punch with men he had never laid
eyes on, went off on a feverish hunt for cigars, came back distractedly,
joked with young girls and even started some of them dancing. The whole
affair was over in no time. The bride and the groom came rushing
downstairs; and as they escaped from the shower of rice, Roger ran after
them down the steps. He gripped Sloane's hand.

"Remember, boy, it's her whole life!" entreated Roger hoarsely.

"Yes, sir! I'll look out! No fear!"

"Good-bye, daddy!"

"God bless you, dear!"

They were speeding away. And with the best man, who looked weary and spent,
Roger went slowly back up the steps. It was an effort now to talk. Thank
Heaven these people soon were gone. Last of all went the ponderous aunt of
the groom. How the taxi groaned as he helped her inside and started her off
to Bridgeport. Back in his study he found his cigars and smoked one
dismally with Bruce. Bruce was a decent sort of chap. He knew when to be
silent.

"Well," he spoke finally, rising, "I guess I'll have to get back to the
office." He smiled a little and put his hand on Roger's weary shoulder.
"We're glad it's over--eh?" he asked.

"Bruce," said Roger heavily, "you've got a girl of your own growing up.
Don't let her grow to feel you're old. Live on with her. She'll need you."
His massive blunt face darkened. "The world's so damnably new," he
muttered, "so choked up with fool ideas." Bruce still smiled
affectionately.

"Go up and see Edith," he said, "and forget 'em. She never lets one into
the flat. She said you were to be sure to come and tell her about the
wedding."

"All right, I'll go," said Roger. He hunted about for his hat and coat.
What a devilish mess they had made of the house. A half hour later he was
with Edith; but there, despite his efforts to answer all her questions, he
grew heavier and heavier, till at last he barely spoke. He sat watching
Edith's baby.

"Did you talk to Laura?" he heard her ask.

"Yes," he replied. "It did no good." He knew that Edith was waiting for
more, but he kept doggedly silent.

"Well, dear," she said presently, "at least you did what you could for
her."

"I've never done what I could," he rejoined. "Not with any one of you." He
glanced at her with a twinge of pain. "I don't know as it would have helped
much if I had. This town is running away with itself. I want a rest now,
Edith, I want things quiet for a while." He felt her anxious, pitying look.

"Where's Deborah?" she asked him. "Gone back to school already?"

"I don't know where she is," he replied. And then he rose forlornly. "I
guess I'll be going back home," he said.

On his way, as his thoughts slowly cleared, the old uneasiness rose in his
mind. Would Deborah want to keep the house? Suppose she suggested moving to
some titty-tatty little flat. No, he would not stand in her way. But, Lord,
what an end to make of his life.

His home was almost dark inside, but he noticed rather to his surprise that
the rooms had already been put in order. He sank down on the living room
sofa and lay motionless for a while. How tired he was. From time to time he
drearily sighed. Yes, Deborah would find him old and life here dull and
lonely. Where was she to-night, he wondered. Couldn't she quit her zoo
school for one single afternoon? At last, when the room had grown pitch
dark, he heard the maid lighting the gas in the hall. Roger loudly cleared
his throat, and at the sound the startled girl ejaculated, "Oh, my Gawd!"

"It's I," said Roger sternly. "Did Miss Deborah say when she'd be back?"

"She didn't go out, sir. She's up in her room."

Roger went up and found her there. All afternoon with both the maids she
had been setting the house to rights, and now she ached in every limb. She
was lying on her bed, and she looked as though she had been crying.

"Where have you been?" she inquired.

"At Edith's," her father answered. She reached up and took his hand, and
held it slowly tighter.

"You aren't going to find it too lonely here, with Laura gone?" she asked
him. And the wistfulness in her deep sweet voice made something thrill in
Roger.

"Why should I?" he retorted. Deborah gave a queer little laugh.

"Oh, I'm just silly, that's all," she said. "I've been having a fit of
blues. I've been feeling so old this afternoon--a regular old woman. I
wanted you, dearie, and I was afraid that you--" she broke off.

"Look here," said Roger sharply. "Do you really want to keep this house?"

"Keep this house? Why, father!"

"You think you can stand it here alone, just the two of us?" he demanded.

"I can," cried Deborah happily. Her father walked to the window. There as
he looked blindly out, his eyes were assaulted by the lights of all those
titty-tatty flats. And a look of vicious triumph appeared for a moment on
his face.

"Very well," he said quietly, turning back. "Then we're both suited." He
went to the door. "I'll go and wash up for supper," he said.




CHAPTER VIII


It was a relief to him to find how smoothly he and Deborah dropped back
into their old relations. It was good to get home those evenings; for in
this new stage of its existence, with its family of two, the house appeared
to have filled itself with a deep reposeful feeling. Laura had gone out of
its life. He glanced into her room one night, and it looked like a guest
room now. The sight of it brought him a pang of regret. But the big ship
which was bearing her swiftly away to "Paris in June" seemed bearing off
Roger's uneasiness too. He could smile at his former fears, for Laura was
safely married and wildly in love with her husband. Time, he thought, would
take care of the rest. Occasionally he missed her here--her voice,
high-pitched but musical, chatting and laughing at the 'phone, her bustle
of dressing to go out, glimpses of her extravagances, of her smart suits
and evening gowns, of all the joyous color and dash that she had given to
his home. But these regrets soon died away. The old house shed them easily,
as though glad to enter this long rest.

For the story of his family, from Roger's point of view at least, was a
long uneven narrative, with prolonged periods of peace and again with
events piling one on the other. And now there came one of those peaceful
times, and Roger liked the quiet. The old routine was re-established--his
dinner, his paper, his cigar and then his book for the evening, some good
old-fashioned novel or some pleasant book of travel which he and Judith had
read aloud when they were planning out their lives. They had meant to go
abroad so often when the children had grown up. And he liked to read about
it still. Life was so quiet over the sea, things were so old and mellow
there. He resumed, too, his horseback rides, and on the way home he would
stop in for a visit with Edith and her baby. The wee boy grew funnier every
day, with his sudden kicks and sneezes, his waving fists and mighty yawns.
And Roger felt drawn to his daughter here, for in these grateful seasons of
rest that followed the birth of each of her children, Edith loved to lie
very still and make new plans for her small brood.

Only once she spoke of Laura, and then it was to suggest to him that he
gather together all the bills his daughter had doubtless left behind.

"If you don't settle them," Edith said, "they'll go to her husband. And you
wouldn't like that, would you?"

Roger said he would see to it, and one evening after dinner he started in
on Laura's bills. It was rather an appalling time. He looked into his bank
account and found that Laura's wedding would take about all his surplus.
But this did not dismay him much, for money matters never did. It simply
meant more work in the office.

The next day he rose early and was in his office by nine o'clock. He had
not been so prompt in months, and many of his employees came in late that
morning. But nobody seemed very much perturbed, for Roger was an easy
employer. Still, he sternly told himself, he had been letting things get
altogether too slack. He had been neglecting his business again. The work
had become so cut and dried, there was nothing creative left to do. It had
not been so in years gone by. Those years had fairly bristled with ideas
and hopes and schemes. But even those old memories were no longer here to
hearten him. They had all been swept away when Bruce had made him move out
of his office in a dark creaky edifice down close under Brooklyn Bridge,
and come up to this new building, this steel-ribbed caravansary for all
kinds of business ventures, this place of varnished woodwork, floods of
daylight, concrete floors, this building fireproof throughout. That
expressed it exactly, Roger thought. Nothing could take fire here, not even
a man's imagination, even though he did not feel old. Now and then in the
elevator, as some youngster with eager eyes pushed nervously against him,
Roger would frown and wonder, "What are you so excited about?"

But again the business was running down, and this time he must jerk it back
before it got beyond him. He set himself doggedly to the task, calling in
his assistants one by one, going through the work in those outer rooms,
where at tables long rows of busy young girls, with colored pencils,
scissors and paste, were demolishing enormous piles of newspapers and
magazines. And vaguely, little by little, he came to a realization of how
while he had slumbered the life of the country had swept on. For as he
studied the lists and the letters of his patrons, Roger felt confusedly
that a new America was here.

Clippings, clippings, clippings. Business men and business firms, gigantic
corporations, kept sending here for clippings, news of themselves or their
rivals, keeping keen watch on each other's affairs for signs of strength or
weakness. How savage was the fight these days. Here was news of mines and
mills and factories all over the land, clippings sent each morning by
special messengers downtown to reach the brokers' offices before the market
opened. One broker wrote, "Please quote your terms for the following. From
nine to two o'clock each day our messenger will call at your office every
hour for clippings giving information of the companies named below."

The long list appended carried Roger's fancy out all over the continent.
And then came this injunction: "Remember that our messenger must leave your
office every hour. In information of this kind every minute counts."

Clippings, clippings, clippings. As Roger turned over his morning mail, in
spite of himself he grew absorbed. What a change in the world of
literature. What a host of names of scribblers, not authors but just
writers, not only men but women too, novelists and dramatists, poets and
muckrakers all jumbled in together, each one of them straining for a place.
And the actors and the actresses, the musicians and the lecturers, each
with his press agent and avid for publicity, "fame!" And here were society
women, from New York and other cities, all eager for press notices of
social affairs they had given or managed, charity work they had conducted,
suffrage speeches they had made. Half the women in the land were fairly
talking their heads off, it seemed. Some had been on his lists for years.
They married and wanted to hear what was said in the papers about their
weddings, they quarreled and got divorces and still sent here for
clippings, they died and still their relatives wrote in for the funeral
notices. And even death was commercialized. A maker of monuments wanted
news "of all people of large means, dead or dangerously ill, in the State
of Pennsylvania." Here were demands from charity bodies, hospitals and
colleges, from clergymen with an anxious eye on the Monday morning papers.
And here was an anarchist millionaire! And here was an insane asylum
wanting to see itself in print!

With a grim smile on his heavy visage, Roger stared out of his window.
Slowly the smile faded, a wistful look came on his face.

"Who'll take my business when I'm gone?"

If his small son had only lived, with what new zest and vigor it might have
been made to grow and expand. If only his son had been here by his side....




CHAPTER IX


DEBORAH needed rest, he thought, for the bright attractive face of his
daughter was looking rather pale of late, and the birthmark on her forehead
showed a faint thin line of red. One night at dinner, watching her, he
wondered what was on her mind. She had come in late, and though several
times she had made an effort to keep up the conversation, her cheeks were
almost colorless and more than once in her deepset eyes came a flash of
pain that startled him.

"Look here. What's the matter with you?" he asked. Deborah looked up
quickly.

"I'd rather not talk about it, dad--"

"Very well," he answered. And with a slight hesitation, "But I think I know
the trouble," he said. "And perhaps some other time--when you do feel like
talking--" He stopped, for on her wide sensitive lips he saw a twitch of
amusement.

"What do you think is the trouble?" she asked. And Roger looked at her
squarely.

"Loneliness," he answered.

"Why?" she asked him.

"Well, there's Edith's baby--and Laura getting married--"

"I see--and so I'm lonely for a family of my own. But you're forgetting my
school," she said.

"Yes, yes, I know," he retorted. "But that's not at all the same.
Interesting work, no doubt, but--well, it isn't personal."

"Oh, isn't it?" she answered, and she drew a quivering breath. Rising from
the table she went into the living room, and there a few moments later he
found her walking up and down. "I think I will tell you now," she said.
"I'm afraid of being alone to-night, of keeping this matter to myself." He
looked at her apprehensively.

"Very well, my dear," he said.

"This is the trouble," she began. "Down in my school we've a family of
about three thousand children. A few I get to know so well I try to follow
them when they leave. And one of these, an Italian boy--his name is Joe
Bolini--was one of the best I ever had, and one of the most appealing. But
Joe took to drinking and got in with a gang of boys who blackmailed small
shopkeepers. He used to come to me at times in occasional moods of
repentance. He was a splendid physical type and he'd been a leader in our
athletics, so I took him back into the school to manage our teams in
basket-ball. He left the gang and stopped drinking, and we had long talks
together about his great ambition. He wanted to enter the Fire Department
as soon as he was twenty-one. And I promised to use my influence." She
stopped, still frowning slightly.

"What happened?" Roger asked her.

"His girl took up with another man, and Joe has hot Italian blood. He got
drunk one night and--shot them both." There was another silence. "I did
what I could," she said harshly, "but he had a bad record behind him, and
the young assistant district attorney had his own record to think of, too.
So Joe got a death sentence. We appealed the case but it did no good. He
was sent up the river and is in the death house now--and he sent for me to
come to-day. His letter hinted he was scared, he wrote that his priest was
no good to him. So I went up this afternoon. Joe goes to the chair
to-morrow at six."

Deborah went to the sofa and sat down inertly. Roger remained motionless,
and a dull chill crept over him.

"So you see my work is personal," he heard her mutter presently. All at
once she seemed so far away, such a stranger to him in this life of hers.

"By George, it's horrible!" he said. "I'm sorry you went to see the boy!"

"I'm glad," was his daughter's quick retort. "I've been getting much too
sure of myself--of my school, I mean, and what it can do. I needed this to
bring me back to the kind of world we live in!"

"What do you mean?" he roughly asked.

"I mean there are schools and prisons! And gallows and electric chairs! And
I'm for schools! They've tried their jails and gallows for whole black
hideous centuries! What good have they done? If they'd given Joe back to
the school and me, I'd have had him a fireman in a year! I know, because I
studied him hard! He'd have _grown_ fighting fires, he would have _saved_
lives!"

Again she stopped, with a catch of her breath. In suspense he watched her
angry struggle to regain control of herself. She sat bolt upright, rigid;
her birthmark showed a fiery red. In a few moments he saw her relax.

"But of course," she added wearily, "it's much more complex than that. A
school is nothing nowadays--just by itself alone, I mean--it's only a part
of a city's life--which for most tenement children is either very dull and
hard, or cheap and false and overexciting. And behind all that lie the
reasons for that. And there are so many reasons." She stared straight past
her father as though at something far away. Then she seemed to recall
herself: "But I'm talking too much of my family."

Roger carefully lit a cigar:

"I don't think you are, my dear. I'd like to hear more about it." She
smiled:

"To keep my mind off Joe, you mean."

"And mine, too," he answered.

They had a long talk that evening about her hope of making her school what
Roger visaged confusedly as a kind of mammoth home, the center of a
neighborhood, of one prodigious family. At times when the clock on the
mantle struck the hour loud and clear, there would fall a sudden silence,
as both thought of what was to happen at dawn. But quickly Roger would
question again and Deborah would talk steadily on. It was after midnight
when she stopped.

"You've been good to me to-night, dearie," she said. "Let's go to bed now,
shall we?"

"Very well," he answered. He looked at his daughter anxiously. She no
longer seemed to him mature. He could feel what heavy discouragements, what
problems she was facing in the dark mysterious tenement world which she had
chosen to make her own. And compared to these she seemed a mere girl, a
child groping its way, just making a start. And so he added wistfully, "I
wish I could be of more help to you." She looked up at him for a moment.

"Do you know why you are such a help?" she said. "It's because you have
never grown old--because you've never allowed yourself to grow absolutely
certain about anything in life." A smile half sad and half perplexed came
on her father's heavy face.

"You consider that a strong point?" he asked.

"I do," she replied, "compared to being a bundle of creeds and prejudices."

"Oh, I've got prejudices enough."

"Yes," she said. "And so have I. But we're not even sure of _them_, these
days."

"The world has a habit of crowding in," her father muttered vaguely.

       *       *       *       *       *

Roger did not sleep that night. He could not keep his thoughts away from
what was going to happen at dawn. Yes, the city was crowding in upon this
quiet house of his. Dimly he could recollect, in the genial years of long
ago, just glancing casually now and then at some small and unobtrusive
notice in his evening paper: "Execution at Sing Sing." It had been so
remote to him. But here it was smashing into his house, through the life
his own daughter was leading day and night among the poor! Each time he
thought of that lad in a cell, again a chill crept over him! But savagely
he shook it off, and by a strong effort of his will he turned his thoughts
to the things she had told him about her school. Yes, in her main idea she
was right. He had no use for wild reforms, but here was something solid, a
good education for every child. More than once, while she had talked,
something very deep in Roger had leaped up in swift response.

For Deborah, too, was a part of himself. He, too, had had his feeling for
humanity in the large. For years he had run a boys' club at a little
mission school in which his wife had been interested, and on Christmas Eve
he had formed the habit of gathering up a dozen small urchins right off the
street and taking them 'round and fitting them out with good warm winter
clothing, after which he had gone home to help Judith trim the Christmas
tree and fill their children's stockings. And later, when she had gone to
bed, invariably he had taken "The Christmas Carol" from its shelf and had
settled down with a glow of almost luxurious brotherhood. There was
sentiment in Roger Gale, and as he read of "Tiny Tim" his deepset eyes
would glisten with tears.

And now here was Deborah fulfilling a part of him in herself. "You will
live on in our children's lives." But this was going much too far! She was
letting herself be swallowed up completely by this work of hers! It was all
very well for the past ten years, but she was getting on in age! High time
to marry and settle down!

Again angrily he shook off the thought of that boy Joe alone in a cell,
eyes fixed in animal terror upon the steel door which would open so soon.

The day was slowly breaking. It was the early part of June. How fresh and
lovely it must be up there in the big mountains with Edith's happy little
lads. Here it was raw and garish, weird. Some sparrows began quarreling
just outside his window. Roger rose and walked the room. Restlessly he went
into the hall. The old house appeared so strange in this light--as though
stripped bare--there was something gone. Softly he came to Deborah's door.
It was open wide, for the night had been warm, and she lay awake upon her
bed with her gaze fixed on the ceiling. She turned her head and saw him
there. He came in and sat down by her window. For a long time neither made
a sound. Then the great clock on the distant tower, which had been silent
through the night, resumed its deep and measured boom. It struck six times.
There was silence again. More and more taut grew his muscles, and suddenly
it felt to him as though Deborah's fierce agony were pounding into his very
soul. The slow, slow minutes throbbed away. At last he rose and left her.
There was a cold sweat on his brow.

"I'll go down and make her some coffee," he thought.

Down in the kitchen it was a relief to bang about hunting for the utensils.
On picnics up in the mountains his coffee had been famous. He made some now
and boiled some eggs, and they breakfasted in Deborah's room. She seemed
almost herself again. Later, while he was dressing, he saw her in the
doorway. She was looking at her father with bright and grateful,
affectionate eyes.

"Will you come to school with me to-day? I'd like you to see it," Deborah
said.

"Very well," he answered gruffly.




CHAPTER X


Out of the subway they emerged into a noisy tenement street. Roger had
known such streets as this, but only in the night-time, as picturesque and
adventurous ways in an underground world he had explored in search of
strange old glittering rings. It was different now. Gone were the Rembrandt
shadows, the leaping flare of torches, the dark surging masses of weird
uncouth humanity. Here in garish daylight were poverty and ugliness, here
were heaps of refuse and heavy smells and clamor. It disgusted and repelled
him, and he was tempted to turn back. But glancing at Deborah by his side
he thought of the night she had been through. No, he decided, he would go
on and see what she was up to here.

They turned into a narrower street between tall dirty tenements, and in a
twinkling all was changed. For the street, as far as he could see, was gay
with flaunting colors, torrents of bobbing hats and ribbons, frocks and
blouses, shirts and breeches, vivid reds and yellows and blues. It was
deafening with joyous cries, a shrill incessant chatter, chatter, piercing
yells and shrieks of laughter. Children, swarms of children, children of
all sizes passed him, clean and dirty, smiling, scowling, hurrying,
running, pummeling, grabbing, whirling each other 'round and 'round--till
the very air seemed quivering with wild spirits and new life!

He heard Deborah laughing. Five hilarious small boys had hold of her hands
and were marching in triumph waving their caps. "Heigh there--heigh there!
Heigh--heigh--heigh!"

The school was close in front of them. An enormous building of brick and
tile wedged into a disordered mass of tenements, shops and factories, it
had been built around a court shut out from the street by a high steel
fence. They squeezed into the gateway, through which a shouting punching
mob of urchins were now pushing in; and soon from a balcony above Roger
looked down into the court, where out of a wild chaos order was appearing.
Boys to the right and girls to the left were forming in long sinuous lines,
and three thousand faces were turned toward the building. In front appeared
the Stars and Stripes. Then suddenly he heard a crash from underneath the
balcony, and looking down he saw a band made up of some thirty or forty
boys. Their leader, a dark Italian lad, made a flourish, a pass with his
baton, and the band broke into a blaring storm, an uproarious, booming
march. The mob below fell into step, and line after line in single file the
children marched into their school.

"Look up! Look all around you!" He heard Deborah's eager voice in his ear.
And as he looked up from the court below he gave a low cry of amazement. In
hundreds of windows all around, of sweatshops, tenements, factories, on
tier upon tier of fire escapes and even upon the roofs above, silent
watchers had appeared. For this one moment in the day the whole congested
neighborhood had stopped its feverish labor and become an amphitheater with
all eyes upon the school. And the thought flashed into Roger's mind:
"Deborah's big family!"

He had a strange confusing time. In her office, in a daze, he sat and heard
his daughter with her two assistant principals, her clerk and her
stenographer, plunge into the routine work of the day. What kind of school
teacher was this? She seemed more like the manager of some buzzing factory.
Messages kept coming constantly from class-rooms, children came for
punishment, and on each small human problem she was passing judgment
quickly. Meanwhile a score of mothers, most of them Italians with colored
shawls upon their heads, had straggled in and taken seats, and one by one
they came to her desk. For these women who had been children in peasant
huts in Italy now had children of their own in the great city of New York,
and they found it very baffling. How to keep them in at night? How to make
them go to the priest? How to feed and clothe them? How to live in these
tenement homes, in this wild din and chaos? They wanted help and they
wanted advice. Deborah spoke in Italian, but turning to her father she
would translate from time to time.

A tired scowling woman said, "My boy won't obey me. His father is dead.
When I slap him he only jumps away. I lock him in and he steals the key, he
keeps it in his pocket. He steals the money that I earn. He says I'm from
the country." And a flabby anxious woman said, "My girl runs out to dance
halls. Sometimes she comes back at two in the morning. She is fifteen and
she ought to get married. But what can I do? A nice steady man who never
dances comes sometimes to see her--but she makes faces and calls him a
fatty, she dances before him and pushes him out and slams the door. What
can I do?"

"Please come and see our janitor and make him fix our kitchen sink!" an
angry little woman cried. "When I try to wash the dishes the water spouts
all over me!" And then a plump rosy mother said in a soft coaxing voice, "I
have eight little children, all nice and clean. When you tell them to do
anything they always do it quickly. They smile at you, they are like
saints. So could the kind beautiful teacher fix it up with a newspaper to
send them to the country--this summer when it is so hot? The newspaper
could send a man and he could take our pictures."

"Most of us girls used to be in this school," said a bright looking Jewess
of eighteen. "And you taught us how we should live nice. But how can we
live nice when our shop is so rotten? Our boss is trying to kiss the
girls, he is trying to hug them on the stairs. And what he pays us is a
joke, and we must work till nine o'clock. So will you help us, teacher, and
give us a room for our meetings here? We want to have a union."

A truant officer brought in two ragged, frightened little chaps. Found on
the street during school hours, they had to give an account of themselves.
Sullenly one of them gave an address far up in the Bronx, ten miles away.
They had not been home for a week, he said. Was he lying? What was to be
done? Somewhere in the city their homes must be discovered. And the talk of
the truant officer made Roger feel ramifications here which wound out
through the police and the courts to reformatories, distant cells. He
thought of that electric chair, and suddenly he felt oppressed by the heavy
complexity of it all.

And this was part and parcel of his daughter's daily work in school! Still
dazed, disturbed but curious, he sat and watched and listened, while the
bewildering demands of Deborah's big family kept crowding in upon her. He
went to a few of the class-rooms and found that reading and writing,
arithmetic and spelling were being taught in ways which he had never
dreamed of. He found a kindergarten class, a carpenter shop and a printing
shop, a sewing class and a cooking class in a large model kitchen. He
watched the nurse in her hospital room, he went into the dental clinic
where a squad of fifty urchins were having their teeth examined, and out
upon a small side roof he found a score of small invalids in steamer
chairs, all fast asleep. It was a strange astounding school! He heard
Deborah speak of a mothers' club and a neighborhood association; and he
learned of other ventures here, the school doctor, the nurse and the
visitor endlessly making experiments, delving into the neighborhood for
ways to meet its problems. And by the way Deborah talked to them he felt
she had gone before, that years ago by day and night she had been over the
ground alone. And she'd done all this while she lived in his house!

Scattered memories out of the past, mere fragments she had told him, here
flashed back into his mind: humorous little incidents of daily battles she
had waged in rotten old tenement buildings with rags and filth and garbage,
with vermin, darkness and disease. Mingled with these had been accounts of
dances, weddings and christenings and of curious funeral rites. And
struggling with such dim memories of Deborah in her twenties, called forth
in his mind by the picture of the woman of thirty here, Roger grew still
more confused. What was to be the end of it? She was still but a pioneer in
a jungle, endlessly groping and trying new things.

"How many children are there in the public schools?" he asked.

"About eight hundred thousand," Deborah said.

"Good Lord!" he groaned, and he felt within him a glow of indignation rise
against these immigrant women for breeding so inconsiderately. With the mad
city growing so fast, and the people of the tenements breeding, breeding,
breeding, and packing the schools to bursting, what could any teacher be
but a mere cog in a machine, ponderous, impersonal, blind, grinding out
future New Yorkers?

He reached home limp and battered from the storm of new impressions coming
on top of his sleepless night. He had thought of a school as a simple
place, filled with little children, mischievous at times perhaps and some
with dirty faces, but still with minds and spirits clean, unsoiled as yet
by contact with the grim spirit of the town. He had thought of childhood as
something intimate and pure, inside his home, his family. Instead of that,
in Deborah's school he had been disturbed and thrilled by the presence all
around him of something wild, barbaric, dark, compounded of the city
streets, of surging crowds, of rushing feet, of turmoil, filth, disease and
death, of poverty and vice and crime. But Roger could still hear that band.
And behind its blaring crash and din he had felt the vital throbbing of a
tremendous joyousness, of gaiety, fresh hopes and dreams, of leaping young
emotions like deep buried bubbling springs bursting up resistlessly to
renew the fevered life of the town! Deborah's big family! Everybody's
children!

"You will live on in our children's lives." The vision hidden in those
words now opened wide before his eyes.




CHAPTER XI


She told him the next morning her night school closed for the summer that
week.

"I think I should like to see it," her father said determinedly. She gave
him an affectionate smile:

"Oh, dearie. Haven't you had enough?"

"I guess I can stand it if you can," was his gruff rejoinder, "though if I
ran a school like yours I think by night I'd have schooled enough. Do most
principals run night schools too?"

"A good many of them do."

"Isn't it taxing your strength?" he asked.

"Don't you have to tax your strength," his daughter replied good humoredly,
"to really accomplish anything? Don't you have to risk yourself in order to
really live these days? Suppose you come down to-morrow night. We won't go
to the school, for I doubt if the clubs and classes would interest you very
much. I'll take you through the neighborhood."

       *       *       *       *       *

They went down the following evening. The night was warm and humid, and
through the narrow tenement streets there poured a teeming mass of life.
People by the thousands passed, bareheaded, men in shirt sleeves, their
faces glistening with sweat. Animal odors filled the air. The torches on
the pushcarts threw flaring lights and shadows, the peddlers shouted
hoarsely, the tradesmen in the booths and stalls joined in with cries,
shrill peals of mirth. The mass swept onward, talking, talking, and its
voice was a guttural roar. Small boys and girls with piercing yells kept
darting under elbows, old women dozed on doorsteps, babies screamed on
every side. Mothers leaned out of windows, and by their faces you could see
that they were screaming angrily for children to come up to bed. But you
could not hear their cries. Here around a hurdy gurdy gravely danced some
little girls. A tense young Jew, dark faced and thin, was shouting from a
wagon that all men and women must be free and own the factories and mills.
A mob of small boys, clustered 'round a "camp fire" they had made on the
street, were leaping wildly through the flames. It was a mammoth cauldron
here, seething, bubbling over with a million foreign lives. Deborah's big
family.

She turned into a doorway, went down a long dark passage and came into a
court-yard enclosed by greasy tenement walls that reared to a spot of dark
blue sky where a few quiet stars were twinkling down. With a feeling of
repugnance Roger followed his daughter into a tall rear building and up a
rickety flight of stairs. On the fourth landing she knocked at a door, and
presently it was opened by a stout young Irish woman with flushed haggard
features and disheveled hair.

"Oh. Good evening, Mrs. Berry."

"Good evening. Come in," was the curt reply. They entered a small stifling
room where were a stove, two kitchen chairs and three frowzled beds in
corners. On one of the beds lay a baby asleep, on another two small
restless boys sat up and watched the visitors. A sick man lay upon the
third. And a cripple boy, a boarder here, stood on his crutches watching
them. Roger was struck at once by his face. Over the broad cheek bones the
sallow skin was tightly drawn, but there was a determined set to the jaws
that matched the boy's shrewd grayish eyes, and his face lit up in a
wonderful smile.

"Hello, Miss Deborah," he said. His voice had a cheery quality.

"Hello, Johnny. How are you?"

"Fine, thank you."

"That's good. I've brought my father with me."

"Howdado, sir, glad to meet you."

"It's some time since you've been to see me, John," Deborah continued.

"I know it is," he answered. And then with a quick jerk of his head, "He's
been pretty bad," he said. Roger looked at the man on the bed. With his
thin waxen features drawn, the man was gasping for each breath.

"What's the matter?" Roger whispered.

"Lungs," said the young woman harshly. "You needn't bother to speak so low.
He can't hear you anyhow. He's dying. He's been dying weeks."

"Why didn't you let me know of this?" Deborah asked gently.

"Because I knew what you'd want to do--take him off to a hospital! And I
ain't going to have it! I promised him he could die at home!"

"I'm sorry," Deborah answered. There was a moment's silence, and the baby
whimpered in its sleep. One child had gone to his father's bed and was
frowning at his agony as though it were a tiresome sight.

"Are any of them coughing?" Deborah inquired.

"No," said the woman sharply.

"Yes, they are, two of 'em," John cheerfully corrected her.

"You shut up!" she said to him, and she turned back to Deborah. "It's my
home, I guess, and my family, too. So what do you think that _you_ can do?"
Deborah looked at her steadily.

"Yes, it's your family," she agreed. "And it's none of my business, I
know--except that John is one of my boys--and if things are to go on like
this I can't let him board here any more. If he had let me know before I'd
have taken him from you sooner. You'll miss the four dollars a week he
pays."

The woman swallowed fiercely. The flush on her face had deepened. She
scowled to keep back the tears.

"We can all die for all I care! I've about got to the end of my rope!"

"I see you have." Deborah's voice was low. "You've made a hard plucky
fight, Mrs. Berry. Are there any empty rooms left in this building?"

"Yes, two upstairs. What do you want to know for?"

"I'm going to rent them for you. I'll arrange it to-night with the janitor,
on condition that you promise to move your children to-morrow upstairs and
keep them there until this is over. Will you?"

"Yes."

"That's sensible. And I'll have one of the visiting nurses here within an
hour."

"Thanks."

"And later on we'll have a talk."

"All right--"

"Good-night, Mrs. Berry."

"Good-night, Miss Gale, I'm much obliged.... Say, wait a minute! Will you?"
The wife had followed them out on the landing and she was clutching
Deborah's arm. "Why can't the nurse give him something," she whispered, "to
put him to sleep for good and all? It ain't right to let a man suffer like
that! I can't stand it! I'm--I'm--" she broke off with a sob. Deborah put
one arm around her and held her steadily for a moment.

"The nurse will see that he sleeps," she said. "Now, John," she added,
presently, when the woman had gone into the room, "I want you to get your
things together. I'll have the janitor move them upstairs. You sleep there
to-night, and to-morrow morning come to see me at the school."

"All right, Miss Deborah, much obliged. I'll be all right. Good-night,
sir--"

"Good-night, my boy," said Roger, and suddenly he cleared his throat. He
followed his daughter down the stairs. A few minutes she talked with the
janitor, then joined her father in the court.

"I'm sorry I took you up there," she said. "I didn't know the man was
sick."

"Who are they?" he asked.

"Poor people," she said. And Roger flinched.

"Who is this boy?"

"A neighbor of theirs. His mother, who was a widow, died about two years
ago. He was left alone and scared to death lest he should be 'put away' in
some big institution. He got Mrs. Berry to take him in, and to earn his
board he began selling papers instead of coming to our school. So our
school visitor looked him up. Since then I have been paying his board from
a fund I have from friends uptown, and so he has finished his schooling.
He's to graduate next week. He means to be a stenographer."

"How old is he?"

"Seventeen," she replied.

"How was he crippled? Born that way?"

"No. When he was a baby his mother dropped him one Saturday night when she
was drunk. He has never been able to sit down. He can lie down or he can
stand. He's always in pain, it never stops. I learned that from the doctor
I took him to see. But whenever you ask him how he feels you get the same
answer always: 'Fine, thank you.' He's a fighter, is John."

"He looks it. I'd like to help that boy--"

"All right--you can help him," Deborah said. "You'll find him quite a
tonic."

"A what?"

"A tonic," she repeated. And with a sudden tightening of her wide and
sensitive mouth, Deborah added slowly, "Because, though I've known many
hungry boys, Johnny Geer is the hungriest of them all--hungry to get on in
life, to grow and learn and get good things, get friends, love, happiness,
everything!" As she spoke of this child in her family, over her strong
quiet face there swept a fierce, intent expression which struck Roger
rather cold. What a fight she was making, this daughter of his, against
what overwhelming odds. But all he said to her was this:

"Now let's look at something more cheerful, my dear."

"Very well," she answered with a smile. "We'll go and see Isadore Freedom."

"Who's he?"

"Isadore Freedom," said Deborah, "is the beginning of something tremendous.
He came from Russian Poland--and the first American word he learned over
there was 'freedom.' So in New York he changed his name to that--very
solemnly, by due process of law. It cost him seven dollars. He had nine
dollars at the time. Isadore is a flame, a kind of a torch in the
wilderness."

"How does the flame earn his living?"

"At first in a sweatshop," she replied. "But he came to my school five
nights a week, and at ten o'clock when school was out he went to a little
basement café, where he sat at a corner table, drank one glass of Russian
tea and studied till they closed at one. Then he went to his room, he told
me, and used to read himself to sleep. He slept as a rule four hours. He
said he felt he needed it. Now he's a librarian earning fifteen dollars a
week, and having all the money he needs he has put the thought of it out of
his life and is living for education--education in freedom. For Isadore has
studied his name until he thinks he knows what it means."

They found him in a small public library on an ill-smelling ghetto street.
The place had been packed with people, but the clock had just struck ten
and the readers were leaving reluctantly, many with books under their arms.
At sight of Deborah and her father, Isadore leaped up from his desk and
came quickly to meet them with outstretched hands.

"Oh, this is splendid! Good evening!" he cried. Hardly more than a boy,
perhaps twenty-one, he was short of frame but large of limb. He had wide
stooping shoulders and reddish hollows in his dark cheeks. Yet there was a
springiness in his step, vigor and warmth in the grip of his hand, in the
very curl of his thick black hair, in his voice, in his enormous smile.

"Come," he said to Roger, when the greetings were over. "You shall see my
library, sir. But I want that you shall not see it alone. While you look
you must close for me your eyes and see other libraries, many, many, all
over the world. You must see them in big cities and in very little towns
to-night. You must see people, millions there, hungry, hungry people. Now I
shall show you their food and their drink." As he spoke he was leading them
proudly around. In the stacks along the walls he pointed out fiction,
poetry, history, books of all the sciences.

"They read all, all!" cried Isadore. "Look at this Darwin on my desk. In a
year so many have read this book it is a case for the board of health. And
look at this shelf of economics. I place it next to astronomy. And I say to
these people, 'Yes, read about jobs and your hours and wages. Yes, you must
strike, you must have better lives. But you must read also about the
stars--and about the big spaces--silent--not one single little sound for
many, many million years. To be free you must grow as big as that--inside
of your head, inside of your soul. It is not enough to be free of a czar, a
kaiser or a sweatshop boss. What will you do when they are gone? My fine
people, how will you run the world? You are deaf and blind, you must be
free to open your own ears and eyes, to look into the books and see what is
there--great thoughts and feelings, great ideas! And when you have seen,
then you must think--you must think it all out every time! That is
freedom!'" He stopped abruptly. Again on his dark features came a huge and
winning smile, and with an apologetic shrug, "But I talk too much of my
books," he said. "Come. Shall we go to my café?"

On a neighboring street, a few minutes later, down a flight of steep wooden
stairs they descended into a little café, shaped like a tunnel, the ceiling
low, the bare walls soiled by rubbing elbows, dirty hands, the air blue and
hot with smoke. Young men and girls packed in at small tables bent over
tall glasses of Russian tea, and gesturing with their cigarettes declaimed
and argued excitedly. Quick joyous cries of greeting met Isadore from every
side.

"You see?" he said gaily. "This is my club. Here we are like a family." He
ordered tea of a waiter who seemed more like a bosom friend. And leaning
eagerly forward, he began to speak in glowing terms of the men and girls
from sweatshops who spent their nights in these feasts of the soul,
talking, listening, grappling, "for the power to think with minds as clear
as the sun when it rises," he ardently cried. "There is not a night in this
city, not one, when hundreds do not talk like this until the breaking of
the day! And then they sleep! A little joke! For at six o'clock they must
rise to their work! And that is a force," he added, "not only for those
people but a force for you and me. Do you see? When you feel tired, when
all your hopes are sinking low, you think of those people and you say, 'I
will go to their places.' And you go. You listen and you watch their faces,
and such fire makes you burn! You go home, you are happy, you have a new
life!

"And perhaps at last you will have a religion," he continued, in fervent
tones. "You see, with us Jews--and with Christians, too--the old religion,
it is gone. And in its place there is nothing strong. And so the young
people go all to pieces. They dance and they drink. If you go to those
dance halls you say, 'They are crazy!' For dancing alone is not enough. And
you say, 'These people must have a religion.' You ask, 'Where can I find a
new God?' And you reply, 'There is no God.' And then you must be very sad.
You know how it is? You feel too free. And you feel scared and lonely. You
look up at the stars. There are millions. You are only a speck of dust--on
one.

"But then you come to my library. And you see those hungry people--more
hungry than men have ever been. And you see those books upon the shelves.
And you know when they come together at last, when that power to think as
clear as the sun comes into the souls of those people so hungry, then we
shall have a new god for the world. For there is no end to what they shall
do," Isadore ended huskily.

Roger felt a lump in his throat. He glanced into his daughter's eyes and
saw a suspicious brightness there. Isadore looked at her happily.

"You see?" he said to Roger. "When she came here to-night she was tired,
half sick. But now she is all filled with life!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Later, on the street outside when Isadore had left them, Deborah turned to
her father:

"Before we go home, there's one place more."

And they went to a building not far away, a new structure twelve floors
high which rose out of the neighboring tenements. It had been built, she
told him, by a socialist daily paper. A dull night watchman half asleep
took them in the elevator up to the top floor of the building, where in a
bustling, clanking loft the paper was just going to press. Deborah seemed
to know one of the foremen. He smiled and nodded and led the way through
the noise and bustle to a large glass door at one end. This she opened and
stepped out upon a fire escape so broad it was more like a balcony. And
with the noise of the presses subdued, from their high perch they looked
silently down.

All around them for miles, it seemed, stretched dark uneven fields of
roofs, with the narrow East River winding its way through the midst of them
to the harbor below, silvery, dim and cool and serene, opening to the
distant sea. From the bridges rearing high over the river, lights by
thousands sparkled down. But directly below the spot where they stood was
only a dull hazy glow, rising out of dark tenement streets where dimly they
could just make out numberless moving shadowy forms, restless crowds too
hot to sleep. The roofs were covered everywhere with men and women and
children--families, families, families, all merged together in the dark.
And from them rose into the night a ceaseless murmur of voices, laughing
and joking, quarreling, loving and hating, demanding, complaining, and
fighting and slaving and scheming for bread and the means of stark
existence. But among these struggling multitudes confusedly did Roger feel
the brighter presence here and there of more aspiring figures, small groups
in glaring, stilling rooms down there beneath the murky dark, young people
fiercely arguing, groping blindly for new gods. And all these voices, to
his ears, merged into one deep thrilling hum, these lights into one
quivering glow, that went up toward the silent stars.

And there came to him a feeling which he had often had before in many
different places--that he himself was a part of all this, the great, blind,
wistful soul of mankind, which had been here before he was born and would
be here when he was dead--still groping, yearning, struggling upward, on
and on--to something distant as the sun. And still would he be a part of it
all, through the eager lives of his children. He turned and looked at
Deborah and caught the light that was in her eyes.




CHAPTER XII


Roger awoke the next morning feeling sore and weary, and later in his
office it was hard to keep his mind on his work. He thought of young
Isadore Freedom. He was glad he had met that boy, and so he felt toward
Deborah's whole terrific family. Confused and deafening as it was, there
was something inspiring in it all. But God save him from many such
evenings! For half his life Roger had been a collector, not only of rings
but of people, too, of curious personalities. These human bits, these
memories, he had picked up as he lived along and had taken them with him
and made them his own, had trimmed and polished every one until its rough
unpleasant edges were all nicely smoothed away and it glittered and shone
like the gem that it was. For Roger was an idealist. And so he would have
liked to do here. What a gem could be made of Isadore with a little careful
polishing.

But Deborah's way was different. She stayed in life, lived in it close,
with its sharp edges bristling. In this there was something splendid, but
there was something tragic, too. It was all very well for that young Jew to
burn himself up with his talk about freedom, his feverish searching for new
gods. "In five years," Roger told himself, "Mr. Isadore Freedom will either
tone down or go stark mad."

But quite probably he would tone down, for he was only a youngster, these
were Isadore's wild oats. But this was no longer Deborah's youth, she had
been at this job ten years. And she hadn't gone mad, she had kept herself
sane, she had many sides her father knew. He knew her in the mountains, or
bustling about at home getting ready for Laura's wedding, or packing
Edith's children off for their summer up at the farm. But did that make it
any easier? No. To let yourself go was easy, but to keep hold of yourself
was hard. It meant wear and tear on a woman, this constant straining effort
to keep her balance and see life whole.

"Well, it will break her down, that's all, and I don't propose to allow
it," he thought. "She's got to rest this summer and go easier next fall."

But how could he accomplish it? As he thought about her school, with its
long and generous arms reaching upon every side out into the tenements, the
prospect was bewildering. He searched for something definite. What could he
do to prove to his daughter his real interest in her work? Presently he
remembered Johnny Geer, the cripple boy whom he had liked, and at once he
began to feel himself back again upon known ground. Instead of millions
here was one, one plucky lad who needed help. All right, by George, he
should have it! And Roger told his daughter he would be glad to pay the
expense of sending John away for the summer, and that in the autumn perhaps
he would take the lad into his office.

"That's good of you, dearie," Deborah said. It was her only comment, but
from the look she gave him Roger felt he was getting on.

       *       *       *       *       *

One evening not long afterwards, as they sat together at dinner, she rose
unsteadily to her feet and said in a breathless voice,

"It's rather close in here, isn't it? I think I'll go outside for a while."
Roger jumped up.

"Look here, my child, you're faint!" he cried.

"No, no, it's nothing! Just the heat!" She swayed and reeled, pitched
suddenly forward. "Father! Quick!" And Roger caught her in his arms. He
called to the maid, and with her help he carried Deborah up to her bed.
There she shuddered violently and beads of sweat broke out on her brow.
Her breath came hard through chattering teeth.

"It's so silly!" she said fiercely.

But as moments passed the chill grew worse. Her whole body seemed to be
shaking, and as Roger was rubbing one of her arms she said something to him
sharply, in a voice so thick he could not understand.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I can't feel anything."

"What do you mean?"

"In my arm where you're rubbing--I can't feel your hand."

"You'd better have a doctor!"

"Telephone Allan--Allan Baird. He knows about this," she muttered. And
Roger ran down to the telephone. He was thoroughly frightened.

"All right, Mr. Gale," came Baird's gruff bass, steady and slow, "I think I
know what the trouble is--and I wouldn't worry if I were you. I'll be there
in about ten minutes." And it was hardly more than that when he came into
Deborah's room. A moment he looked down at her.

"Again?" he said. She glanced up at him and nodded, and smiled quickly
through set teeth. Baird carefully examined her and then turned to Roger:
"Now I guess you'd better go out. You stay," he added to Sarah, the maid.
"I may need you here awhile."

About an hour later he came down to Roger's study.

"She's safe enough now, I guess," he said. "I've telephoned for a nurse for
her, and she'll have to stay in bed a few days."

"What's the trouble?"

"Acute indigestion."

"You don't say!" exclaimed Roger brightly, with a rush of deep relief.
Baird gave him a dry quizzical smile.

"People have died of that," he remarked, "in less than an hour. We caught
your daughter just in time. May I stay a few moments?"

"Glad to have you! Smoke a cigar!"

"Thanks--I will." As Baird reached out for the proffered cigar, Roger
suddenly noticed his hand. Long and muscular, finely shaped, it seemed to
speak of strength and skill and an immense vitality. Baird settled himself
in his chair. "I want to talk about her," he said. "This little attack is
only a symptom--it comes from nerves. She's just about ready for a smash.
She's had slighter attacks of this kind before."

"I never knew it," Roger said.

"No--I don't suppose you did. Your daughter has a habit of keeping things
like this to herself. She came to me and I warned her, but she wanted to
finish out her year. Do you know anything about her school work?"

"Yes, I was with her there this week."

"What did she show you?" Baird inquired. Roger tried to tell him. "No,
that's not what I'm after," he said. "That's just one of her usual
evenings." For a moment he smoked in silence. "I'm hunting now for
something else, for some unusual nervous shock which she appears to me to
have had."

"She has!" And Roger told him of her visit up to Sing Sing. Baird's lean
muscular right hand slowly tightened on his chair.

"That's a tough family of hers," he remarked.

"Yes," said Roger determinedly, "and she's got to give it up."

"You mean she ought to. But she won't."

"She's got to be made to," Roger growled. "This summer at least." Baird
shook his head.

"You forget her fresh air work," he replied. "She has three thousand
children on her mind. The city will be like a furnace, of course, and the
children must be sent to camps. If you don't see the necessity, go and talk
to her, and then you will."

"But you can forbid it, can't you?"

"No. Can you?"

"I can try," snapped Roger.

"Let's try what's possible," said Baird. "Let's try to keep her in bed
three days."

"Sounds modest," Roger grunted. And a glimmer of amusement came into
Baird's impassive eyes.

"Try it," he drawled. "By to-morrow night she'll ask for her stenographer.
She'll make you think she is out of the woods. But she won't be, please
remember that. A few years more," he added, "and she'll have used up her
vitality. She'll be an old woman at thirty-five."

"It's got to be stopped!" cried Roger.

"But how?" came the low sharp retort. "You've got to know her trouble
first. And her trouble is deep, it's motherhood--on a scale which has never
been tried before--for thousands of children, all of whom are living in a
kind of hell. I know your daughter pretty well. Don't make the mistake of
mixing her up with the old-fashioned teacher. It isn't what those children
learn, it's how they live that interests her, and how they are all growing
up. I say she's a mother--in spirit--but her body has never borne a child.
And that makes it worse--because it makes her more intense. It isn't
natural, you see."

A little later he rose to go.

"By the way," he said, at the door, "there's something I meant to tell her
upstairs--about a poor devil she has on her mind. A chap named
Berry--dying--lungs. She asked me to go and see him."

"Yes?"

"I found it was only a matter of days." The tragic pity in Baird's quiet
voice was so deep as barely to be heard.

"So I shot him full of morphine. He won't wake up. Please tell her that."

Tall, ungainly, motionless, he loomed there in the doorway. With a little
shrug and a smile he turned and went slowly out of the house.




CHAPTER XIII


Deborah's recovery was rapid and determined. The next night she was sitting
up and making light of her illness. On the third day she dismissed her
nurse, and when her father came home from his office he found gathered
about her bed not only her stenographer but both her assistant principals.
He frowned severely and went to his room, and a few minutes later he heard
them leave. Presently she called to him, and he came to her bedside. She
was lying back on the pillow with rather a guilty expression.

"Up to your old antics, eh?" he remarked.

"Exactly. It couldn't be helped, you see. It's the last week of our school
year, and there are so many little things that have to be attended to. It's
simply now or never."

"Humph!" was Roger's comment. "It's now or never with you," he thought. He
went down to his dinner, and when he came back he found her exhausted. In
the dim soft light of her room her face looked flushed and feverish, and
vaguely he felt she was in a mood where she might listen to reason. He felt
her hot dry hand on his. Her eyes were closed, she was smiling.

"Tell me the news from the mountains," she said. And he gave her the gossip
of the farm in a letter he had had from George. It told of a picnic supper,
the first one of the season. They had had it in the usual place, down by
the dam on the river, "with a bonfire--a perfect peach--down by the big
yellow rock--the one you call the Elephant." As Roger read the letter he
could feel his daughter listening, vividly picturing to herself the great
dark boulders by the creek, the shadowy firs, the stars above and the cool
fresh tang of the mountain night.

"After this little sickness of yours--and that harum scarum wedding," he
said, "I feel we're both entitled to a good long rest in mountain air."

"We'll have it, too," she murmured.

"With Edith's little youngsters. They're all the medicine you need." He
paused for a moment, hesitating. But it was now or never. "The only trouble
with you," he said, "is that you've let yourself be caught by the same
disease which has its grip upon this whole infernal town. You're like
everyone else, you're tackling about forty times what you can do. You're
actually trying not only to teach but to bring 'em all up as your own,
three thousand tenement children. And this is where it gets you."

Again he halted, frowning. What next?

"Go on, dear, please," said Deborah, in demure and even tones. "This is
very interesting."

"Now then," he continued, "in this matter of your school. I wouldn't ask
you to give it up, I've already seen too much of it. But so long as you've
got it nicely started, why not give somebody else a chance? One of those
assistants of yours, for example--capable young women, both. You could
stand right behind 'em with help and advice--"

"Not yet," was Deborah's soft reply. She had turned her head on her pillow
and was looking at him affectionately. "Why not?" he demanded.

"Because it's not nicely started at all. There's nothing brilliant about
me, dear--I'm a plodder, feeling my way along. And what I have done in the
last ten years is just coming to a stage at last where I can really see a
chance to make it count for something. When I feel I've done that, say in
five years more--"

"Those five years," said her father, "may cost you a very heavy price." As
Deborah faced his troubled regard, her own grew quickly serious.

"I'd be willing to pay the price," she replied.

"But why?" he asked with impatience. "Why pay when you don't have to? Why
not by taking one year off get strength for twenty years' work later on?
You'd be a different woman!"

"Yes, I think I should be. I'd never be the same again. You don't quite
understand, you see. This work of mine with children--well, it's like
Edith's having a baby. You have to do it while you're young."

"That works both ways," her father growled.

"What do you mean?" He hesitated:

"Don't you want any children of your own?"

Again she turned her eyes toward his, then closed them and lay perfectly
still. "Now I've done it," he thought anxiously. She reached over and took
his hand.

"Let's talk of our summer's vacation," she said.

A little while later she fell asleep.

Downstairs he soon grew restless and after a time he went out for a walk.
But he felt tired and oppressed, and as he had often done of late he
entered a little "movie" nearby, where gradually the pictures, continually
flashing out of the dark, drove the worries from his mind. For a half an
hour they held his gaze. Then he fell into a doze. He was roused by a roar
of laughter, and straightening up in his seat with a jerk he looked angrily
around. Something broadly comic had been flashed upon the screen; and men
and women and children, Italians, Jews and Irish, jammed in close about
him, a dirty and perspiring mass, had burst into a terrific guffaw. Now
they were suddenly tense again and watching the screen in absorbed
suspense, while the crude passions within themselves were played upon in
the glamorous dark. And Roger scanned their faces--one moment smiling, all
together, as though some god had pulled a string; then mawkish,
sentimental, soft; then suddenly scowling, twitching, with long rows of
animal eyes. But eager--eager all the time! Hungry people--yes, indeed!
Hungry for all the good things in the town, and for as many bad things,
too! On one who tried to feed this mob there was no end to their demands!
What was one woman's life to them? Deborah's big family!

       *       *       *       *       *

Edith came to the house one afternoon, and she was in Deborah's room when
her father returned from his office. Her convalescence over at last, she
was leaving for the mountains.

"Do learn your lesson, Deborah dear," she urged upon her sister. "Let Sarah
pack your trunk at once and come up with me on Saturday night."

"I can't get off for two weeks yet."

"Why can't you?" Edith demanded. And when Deborah spoke of fresh air camps
and baby farms and other work, Edith's impatience only grew. "You'll have
to leave it to somebody else! You're simply in no condition!" she cried.

"Impossible," said Deborah. Edith gave a quick sigh of exasperation.

"Isn't it enough," she asked, "to have worked your nerves to a frazzle
already? Why can't you be sensible? You've got to think of yourself a
little!"

"You'd like me to marry, wouldn't you, dear?" her sister put in wearily.

"Yes, I should, while there is still time! Just now you look far from it!
It's exactly as Allan was saying! If you keep on as you're going you'll be
an old woman at thirty-five!"

"Thank you!" said Deborah sharply. Two spots of color leaped in her checks.
"You'd better leave me, Edith! I'll come up to the mountains as soon as I
can! And I'll try not to look any more like a hag than I have to!
Good-night!"

Roger followed Edith out of the room.

"That last shot of mine struck home," she declared to him in triumph.

"I wouldn't have done it," her father said. "I gave you that remark of
Baird's in strict confidence, Edith--"

"Now father," was her good-humored retort, "suppose you leave this matter
to me. I know just what I'm doing."

"Well," he reflected uneasily, after she had left him, "here's more trouble
in the family. If Edith isn't careful she'll make a fine mess of this whole
affair."

After dinner he went up to Deborah's room, but through the open doorway he
caught a glimpse of his daughter which made him instinctively draw back.
Sitting bolt upright in her bed, sternly she was eyeing herself in a small
mirror in her hand. Her father chuckled noiselessly. A moment later, when
he went in, the glass had disappeared from view. Soon afterwards Baird
himself arrived, and as they heard him coming upstairs Roger saw his
daughter frown, but she continued talking.

"Hello, Allan," she said with indifference. "I'm feeling much better this
evening."

"Are you? Good," he answered, and he started to pull up an easy chair. "I
was hoping I could stay awhile--I've been having one of those long mean
days--"

"I'd a little rather you wouldn't," Deborah put in softly. Allan turned to
her in surprise. "I didn't sleep last night," she murmured, "and I feel so
drowsy." There was a little silence. "And I really don't think there's any
need of your dropping in to-morrow," she added. "I'm so much
better--honestly."

Baird looked at her a moment.

"Right--O," he answered slowly. "I'll call up to-morrow night."

Roger followed him downstairs.

"Come into my den and smoke a cigar!" he proposed in hearty ringing tones.
Allan thanked him and came in, but the puzzled expression was still on his
face, and through the first moments of their talk he was very
absent-minded. Roger's feeling of guilt increased, and he cursed himself
for a meddlesome fool.

"Look here, Baird," he blurted out, "there's something I think you ought to
know." Allan slightly turned his head, and Roger reddened a little. "The
worst thing about living in a house chock full of meddling women is that
you get to be one yourself," he growled. "And the fact is--" he cleared his
throat--"I've put my foot in it, Baird," he said. "I was fool enough the
other day to quote you to Edith."

"To what effect?"

"That if Deborah keeps on like this she'll be an old woman at thirty-five."

Allan sat up in his chair:

"Was Edith here this afternoon?"

"She was," said Roger.

"Say no more."

Baird had a wide, likable, generous mouth which wrinkled easily into a
smile. He leaned back now and enjoyed himself. He puffed a little cloud of
smoke, looked over at Roger and chuckled aloud. And Roger chuckled with
relief. "What a decent chap he is," he thought.

"I'm sorry, of course," he said to Baird. "I thought of trying to
explain--"

"Don't," said Allan. "Leave it alone. It won't do Deborah any harm--may
even do her a little good. After all, I'm her physician--"

"Are you?" Roger asked with a twinkle. "I thought upstairs you were
dismissed."

"Oh no, I'm not," was the calm reply. And the two men went on smoking.
Roger's liking for Baird was growing fast. They had had several little
talks during Deborah's illness, and Roger was learning more of the man.
Raised on a big cattle ranch that his father had owned in New Mexico,
riding broncos on the plains had given him his abounding health of body,
nerve and spirit, his steadiness and sanity in all this feverish city life.

"Are you riding these days?" he inquired.

"No," said Roger, "the park is too hot--and they don't sprinkle the path as
they should. I've had my cob sent up to the mountains. By the way," he
added cordially, "you must come up there and ride with me."

"Thanks, I'd like to," Allan said, and with a little inner smile he added
dryly to himself, "He's getting ready to meddle again." But whatever
amusement Baird had in this thought was concealed behind his sober gray
eyes. Soon after that he took his leave.

"Now then," Roger reflected, with a little glow of expectancy, "if Edith
will only leave me alone, she may find I'm smarter then she thinks!"

       *       *       *       *       *

One evening in the following week, after Edith had left town, Roger had
Bruce to dine at his club, a pleasant old building on Madison Square, where
comfortably all by themselves they could discuss Baird's chances.

"A. Baird and I have been chums," said Bruce, "ever since we were in
college. Take it from me I know his brand. And he isn't the kind to be
pushed."

"Who wants to push him?" Roger demanded, with a sudden guilty twinge.

"Edith does," Bruce answered. "And I tell you that won't do with A. Baird.
He has his mind set on Deborah sure. He's been setting it harder and harder
for months--and he knows it--and so does she. But they're both the kind of
people who don't like interference, they've got to get to it by themselves.
Edith must keep out of the way. She mustn't take it on herself to ask him
up to the mountains." Roger gave a little start. "If she does, there'll be
trouble with Deborah."

Roger smoked for a moment in silence and then sagely nodded his head.

"That's so," he murmured thoughtfully. "Yes, my boy, I guess you're right."

Bruce lifted his mint julep:

"God, but it's hot in here to-night. How about taking a spin up the river?"

"Delighted," replied his father-in-law.

And a half hour later in Bruce's new car, which was the pride and joy of
his life, they were far up the river. On a long level stretch of road Bruce
"let her out to show what she could do." And Roger with his heart in his
mouth and his eye upon the speedometer, saw it creep to sixty-three.

"Almost as good as a horse," remarked Bruce, when the car had slowed a
little.

"Almost," said Roger, "but not quite. It's--well, it's dissipation."

"And a horse?"

"Is life," was the grave reply. "You'll have a crash some day, my boy, if
you go on at your present speed. It gets me worried sometimes. You see
you're a family man."

"I am and I'm glad of it. Edith and the kiddies suit me right down to the
ground. I'm crazy about 'em--you know that. But a chap with a job like
mine," Bruce continued pleadingly, as he drove his car rushing around a
curve, "needs a little dissipation, too. I can't tell you what it means to
me, when I'm kept late at the office, to have this car for the run up home.
Lower Broadway's empty then, and I know the cops. I swing around through
Washington Square, and the Avenue looks clear for miles, nothing but two
long rows of lights to the big hump at Murray Hill. It's the time between
crowds--say about ten. And I know the cops."

"That's all right," said Roger. "No one was more delighted than I when you
got this car. You deserve it. It's the _work_ that I was speaking of.
You've got it going at such a speed--"

"Only way on earth to get on--to get what I want for my family--"

"Yes, yes, I know," muttered Roger vaguely. Bruce began talking of his work
for the steel construction concern downtown.

"Take it from me," he declared at the end, "this town has only just begun!"

"Has, eh," Roger grunted. "Aren't the buildings high enough?"

"My God, I wish they were twenty times higher," Bruce rejoined
good-humoredly. "But they won't be--we've stopped going up. We've done
pretty well in the air, and now we're going underground. And when we get
through, this old rock of Manhattan will be such a network of tunnels
there'll be a hole waiting at every corner to take you wherever you want to
go. Speed? We don't even know what it means!"

And again Bruce "let her out" a bit. It was _quite_ a bit. Roger grabbed
his hat with one hand and the side of the car with the other.

"They'll look back on a mile a minute," said Bruce, "as we look back on
stage coach days! And in the rush hour there'll be a rush that'll make you
think of pneumatic tubes! Not a sound nor a quiver--_just pure speed!_
Shooting people home at night at a couple of hundred miles an hour! The
city will be as big as that! And there won't be any accidents and there
won't be any smoke. Instead of coal they'll use the sun! And, my God, man,
the boulevards--and parks and places for the kids! The way they'll use the
River--and the ocean and the Sound! The Catskills will be Central Park!
Sounds funny, don't it--but it's true. I've studied it out from A to Z.
This town is choking itself to death simply because we're so damn slow! We
don't know how to spread ourselves! All this city needs is speed!"

"Bruce," said Roger anxiously, "just go a bit easy on that gas. The fact
is, it was a great mistake for me to eat those crabs to-night."

Bruce slowed down compassionately, and soon they turned and started home.
And as they drew near the glow of the town, other streets and boulevards
poured more motors into the line, until at last they were rushing along
amid a perfect bedlam made up of honks and shrieks of horns. The air grew
hot and acrid, and looking back through the bluish haze of smoke and dust
behind him Roger could see hundreds of huge angry motor eyes. Crowding and
jamming closer, pell mell, at a pace which barely slackened, they sped on,
a wild uproarious crew, and swept into the city.

Roger barely slept that night. He felt the city clamoring down into his
very soul. "Speed!" he muttered viciously. "Speed--speed! We need more
speed!" The words beat in like a savage refrain. At last with a sigh of
impatience he got up in his nightshirt and walked about. It was good to
feel his way in the dark in this cool silent house which he knew so well.
Soon his nerves felt quieter. He went back to his bed and lay there inert.
How good it would be to get up to the farm.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next Saturday evening, with Deborah, he started for the mountains. And
Bruce came down to see them off.

"Remember, son," said Roger, as the two walked on the platform. "Come up
this year for a month, my boy. You need it." The train was about to start.

"Oh, I'll be all right," was the answer. "My friend the Judge, who has hay
fever, tells me he has found a cure."

"Damn his cure! You come to us!"

"Hold on a minute, live and learn. The Judge is quite excited about it.
You drink little bugs, he says, a billion after every meal. They come in
tall blue bottles. We're going to dine together next week and drink 'em
till we're all lit up. Oh, we're going to have a hell of a time. _His_ wife
left town on Tuesday."

"Bruce," said Roger sternly, as the train began to move, "leave bugs alone
and come up and breathe! And quit smoking so many cigarettes!" He stepped
on the car.

"Remember, son, a solid month!" Bruce nodded as the train moved out.

"Good luck--good-bye--fine summer--my love to the wife and the kiddies--"
and Bruce's dark, tense, smiling face was left behind. Roger went back into
the smoker.

"Now for the mountains," he thought. "Thank God!"




CHAPTER XIV


A few hours later Roger awakened. His lower berth was still pitch dark. The
train had stopped, and he had been roused by a voice outside his window.
Rough and slow and nasal, the leisurely drawl of a mountaineer, it came
like balm to Roger's ears. He raised the curtain and looked out. A train
hand with a lantern was listening to a dairy man, a tall young giant in top
boots. High overhead loomed a shadowy mountain and over its rim came the
glow of the dawn. With a violent lurch the train moved on. And Roger, lying
back on his pillow, looked up at the misty mountain sides all mottled in
the strange blue light with patches of firs and birches and pines. In the
narrow valley up which the train was thundering, were small herds of
grazing cattle, a lonely farmhouse here and there. From one a light was
twinkling. And the city with its heat and noise, its nervous throb, its
bedlam nights, all dropped like a fever from his soul.

Now, close by the railroad track, through a shallow rocky gorge a small
river roared and foamed. Its cool breath came up to his nostrils and
gratefully he breathed it in. For this was the Gale River, named after one
of his forefathers, and in his mind's eye he followed the stream back up
its course to the little station where he and Deborah were to get off.
There the narrowing river bed turned and wound up through a cleft in the
hills to the homestead several miles away. On the dark forest road beside
it he pictured George, his grandson, at this moment driving down to meet
them in a mountain wagon with one of the two hired men, a lantern swinging
under the wheels. What an adventure for young George.

Presently he heard Deborah stirring in the berth next to his own.

At the station George was there, and from a thermos bottle which Edith had
filled the night before he poured coffee piping hot, which steamed in the
keen, frosty air.

"Oh, how good!" cried Deborah. "How thoughtful of your mother, George. How
is she, dear?"

"Oh, she's all right, Aunt Deborah." His blunt freckled features flushed
from his drive, George stood beaming on them both. He appeared, if
anything, tougher and scrawnier than before. "Everything's all right," he
said. "There ain't a sick animal on the whole farm."

As Roger sipped his coffee he was having a look at the horses. One of them
was William, his cob.

"Do you see it?" inquired his grandson.

"What?"

"The boil," George answered proudly, "on William's rump. There it is--on
the nigh side. Gee, but you ought to have seen it last week. It was a whale
of a boil," said George, "but we poulticed him, me and Dave did--and now
the swelling's nearly gone. You can ride him to-morrow if you like."

Luxuriously Roger lit a cigar and climbed to the front seat with George. Up
the steep and crooked road the stout horses tugged their way, and the wagon
creaked, and the Gale River, here only a brook, came gurgling, dashing to
meet them--down from the mountains, from the farm, from Roger's youth to
welcome him home. And the sun was flashing through the pines. As they drew
near the farmhouse through a grove of sugar maples, he heard shrill cries
of, "There they come!" And he glimpsed the flying figures of George's
brothers, Bob and Tad. George whipped up the horses, the wagon gained upon
the boys and reached the house but a few rods behind the little runners.
Edith was waiting by the door, fresh and smiling, blooming with health.
How well this suited her, Roger thought. Amid a gay chorus of greetings he
climbed down heavily out of the wagon, looked about him and drew a deep
breath. The long lazy days on the farm had begun.

From the mountain side the farm looked down on a wide sweeping valley of
woods and fields. The old house straggled along the road, with addition
after addition built on through generations by many men and women. Here lay
the history, unread, of the family of Roger Gale. Inside there were steps
up and down from one part to another, queer crooks in narrow passageways.
The lower end was attached to the woodshed, and the woodshed to the barn.
Above the house a pasture dotted with gray boulders extended up to a wood
of firs, and out of this wood the small river which bore the name of the
family came rushing down the field in a gully, went under the road, swept
around to the right and along the edge of a birch copse just below the
house. The little stream grew quieter there and widened into a mill pond.
At the lower end was a broken dam and beside it a dismantled mill. Here was
peace for Roger's soul. The next day at dawn he awakened, and through the
window close by his bed he saw no tall confining walls; his eye was carried
as on wings out over a billowy blanket of mist, soft and white and cool and
still, reaching over the valley. From underneath to his sensitive ears came
the numberless voices of the awakening sleepers there, cheeps and tremulous
warbles from the birch copse just below, cocks crowing in the valley, and
ducks and geese, dogs, sheep and cattle faintly heard from distant farms.
Just so it had been when he was a boy. How unchanged and yet how new were
these fresh hungry cries of life. From the other end of the house he heard
Edith's tiny son lustily demanding his breakfast, as other wee boys before
him had done for over a hundred years, as other babies still unborn would
do in the many years to come. Soon the cry of the child was hushed. Quiet
fell upon the house. And Roger sank again into deep happy slumber.

Here was nothing new and disturbing. Edith's children? Yes, they were new,
but they were not disturbing. Their growth each summer was a joy, a renewal
of life in the battered old house. Here was no huge tenement family
crowding in with dirty faces, clamorous demands for aid, but only five
delightful youngsters, clean and fresh, of his own blood. He loved the
small excitements, the plans and plots and discoveries, the many adventures
that filled their days. He spent hours with their mother, listening while
she talked of them. Edith did so love this place and she ran the house so
beautifully. It was so cool and fragrant, so clean and so old-fashioned.

Deborah, too, came under the spell. She grew as lazy as a cat and day by
day renewed her strength from the hills and from Edith's little brood.
Roger had feared trouble there, for he knew how Edith disapproved of her
sister's new ideas. But although much with the children, Deborah apparently
had no new ideas at all. She seemed to be only listening. One balmy day at
sunset, Roger saw her lying on the grass with George sprawled by her side.
Her head upon one arm, she appeared to be watching the cattle in the
sloping pasture above. Slowly, as though each one of them was drawn by
mysterious unseen chains, they were drifting down toward the barn where it
was almost milking time. George was talking earnestly. She threw a glance
at him from time to time, and Roger could see how intent were her eyes.
Yes, Deborah knew how to study a boy.

Only once during the summer did she talk about her work. On a walk with her
father one day she took him into a small forlorn building, a mere cabin of
one room. The white paint had long been worn away, the windows were all
broken, half the old shingles had dropped from the roof and on the
flagpole was no flag. It was the district schoolhouse where for nearly half
his life Deborah's grandfather had taught a score of pupils. Inside were a
blackboard, a rusty stove, a teacher's desk and a dozen forms, grown mouldy
and worm-eaten now. A torn and faded picture of Lincoln was upon one wall,
half hidden by a spider's web and by a few old dangling rags which once had
been red, white and blue. Below, still clinging to the wall, was an old
scrap of paper, on which in a large rugged hand there had been written long
ago a speech, but it had been worn away until but three words were
legible--"conceived and dedicated--"

"Tell me about your school," she said. "All you can remember." Seated at
her grandfather's desk she asked Roger many questions. And his
recollections, at first dim and hazy, began to clear a little.

"By George!" he exclaimed. "Here are my initials!"

He stooped over one of the benches.

"Oh, dearie! Where?" He pointed them out, and then while he sat on the rude
old bench for some time more she questioned him.

"But your school was not all here," she said musingly at last, "it was up
on the farm, besides, where you learned to plough and sow and reap and take
care of the animals in the barn, and mend things that were broken, and--oh,
turn your hand to anything. But millions of children nowadays are growing
up in cities, you see."

Half frowning and half smiling she began to talk of her work in town. "What
is there about her," Roger asked, "that reminds me so of my mother?" His
mind strayed back into the past while the low quiet voice of his daughter
went on, and a wistful expression crept over his face. What would she do
with the family name? What life would she lead in those many years?...
"What a mother she would make." The words rose from within him, but in a
voice which was not his own. It was Deborah's grandmother speaking, so
clearly and distinctly that he gave a start almost of alarm.

"And if you don't believe they'll do it," Deborah was saying, "you don't
know what's in children. Only we've got to help bring it out." What had she
been talking about? He remembered the words "a new nation"--no more. "We've
got to grope around in the dark and hunt for new ways and learn as we go.
And when you've once got into the work and really felt the thrill of it
all--well, then it seems rather foolish and small to bother about your own
little life."

       *       *       *       *       *

Roger spent much of his time alone. He took long rides on William along
crooked, hilly roads. As the afternoon drew to its end, the shadows would
creep up the mountain sides to their summits where gl

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