His Family (4 page)

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.