The Man Who Loved Children (22 page)

He bent a little, baffled by her rowdiness, but replied, “I won’t have Hazel, she puts my children against me. I haven’t forgotten,” he ended in a low voice, eying Henny accusingly. She gave a ringing laugh,

“She threw your stupid books on the floor and that’s an injury for life; don’t you think a woman gets sick of your jawing, and calling you to your meals, while she’s got the dirty work to do?”

“Books are sacred to me,” Sam said in a self-commiserating voice: “who would hurt them, would hurt a human being; it is more and worse, because they are the thoughts of people.”

“And for one of your dirty books you would kill me,” Henny cried, getting up. “Let’s stop this. You have her or you don’t have me, that’s all. You can go now and make up your mind.”

He softened his voice, “Pet, don’t let’s get into a conflict again: try to help me. This is for you and the children. Even if you hate me, you know this job is a good thing. I have a better position and better pay. You could have done much better and had social life if you had been willing. I can get a job anywhere after an appointment like this. If you are tired of Washington, we can go elsewhere perhaps.”

She was silent for a while and relaxed slightly so that one could see that for him she had once had charm. At last she said,

“Don’t be so pigheaded: you think of no one but yourself. You know I can’t manage the children. I haven’t the force of character of a Pollit. I won’t let Hazel say anything against you. You ought to know that. As for her religious mumbo jumbo—do I go to church? You weaned me from that! You can rest assured.”

He began to hector, “I won’t have any negative talk round my children. I love my children: they are with me day and night.” She cried, “Oh, Samuel, don’t be such a fool. What humbug! Do you think I can’t manage Hazel! She’s been with me since I was a girl—and if I can’t, Mother can. Let’s talk about other things. Louisa’s getting too big to beat. I don’t know what to do with her. Her stupid great-aunt didn’t ask her to her for the holidays today, and I’m darned if I’ll have her round the house all the time. I want a little peace and to have my children to myself. She has your high-and-mighty ways. Another thing, she’s over eleven and she’s getting to be a woman already. It makes me sick to think that I have to tell her what’s coming to her, what she has to go through. Why should I do it? Why should I go through the rigmarole with another woman’s girl? I’m not going to speak to her. It’s your place or the place of one of her aunts. I couldn’t drag her into all the darn muck of existence myself.”

Sam flushed, with an expression of excited curiosity,

“Why, already—?”

Henrietta tapped her foot with impatience, “You’ve got to talk to her and tell her how to behave. I’m not going to beat such a big girl any more. My veins swell and I nearly faint every time I have to face her. And you shouldn’t beat her either. It’s not right at her age. You don’t know what you’re doing, that think yourself so clever. Write to her mother’s sister and tell her she has to take her and do the business too. I won’t.”

Sam lowered his head, “Henrietta, you must do that: you are her mother.”

“Her mother!” cried Henrietta, looking scornful. “If you weren’t what you are you’d see what a rotten beastly thing I am. If you weren’t what you are you wouldn’t drag her through this: but anything to suit your book. I detest the child but I’m sorry for her, which is more than you are. Take her away. I can’t face it. Oh, God,” she turned away from him, “when I think that whoever she is, she has to do what I have done, and know what I have known, and find out all the beastly lies.” She looked up at him, “That’s why I don’t care what she hears or knows about our marriage. Let her know for herself what it is: then she won’t look back to me as the one who tricked her. I beat her, but I don’t lie to her.”

Sam sighed; and, after a silence, he said, “Well, Pet, I’ll, of course, speak to Louie and tell her to behave and help you all she can and to work at school and so on. But I’m no fit person and I’m afraid you have to act as mother to her. That is the duty you took on in the beginning and you must perform it. She is young yet anyhow. Let us hope—we’ll let it go for a while!”

Henny shrieked with impatience, “Let it go! Why don’t you send the miserable sulky wretch to boarding school, while you’re away? What can I do with another woman’s girl? Isn’t it enough to have one of my own? When I think of the years ahead of her I want to drown myself.”

Sam said in his deep, sympathetic tone, “Why don’t you try mothering Louie a bit?”

Henny gave him a sulky look, “You try it!”

Sam bit his lip, “I’ve been hard on her, Pet, hoping you would soften. I taught her not to coax me or kiss me, or climb on my lap as the others do because in the beginning it made you so angry—but I hope she still looks to me for righteousness and justice! I thought she would turn to the woman for affection and love. It is natural. If I had been soft to her you would have turned against us both.” His voice trembled.

“What’s the use of going into that? How am I to get the household money? You know we need a new boiler.”

He began to explain to her that she would get her money monthly, almost all his salary, and that he would exist on his expenses as much as he could and that he would get invitations from friends abroad which would stretch the money farther.

As soon as she understood the number of persons going, she sneered, “I suppose you fine scientists can’t get along without secretaries; I suppose you’re taking some of those eighteen-year-old high-class women along.”

His face became stern, “Henrietta!”

“Well, are you?”

“I won’t answer such insinuations.”

She let out a howl of laughter, “I hear your answer. I know your breed; all your fine officials debauch the young girls who are afraid to lose their jobs: that’s as old as Washington.” He clenched his fist and brought it down on her dressing table; then, controlling himself, he turned to her, with a paling face and said quietly,

“Perhaps I have made a mistake, but Heaven knows I have been faithful to my marriage vows.”

She chuckled, “The more fool you!”

He flushed and rushed to her, taking her by the shoulder and shaking her hard. She turned her face awkwardly to look up at him, “You know you’re lying!”

He struck her hard on the shoulder, saying, “You are tempting me to do it!”

She at once let out a loud cry, “Don’t you hit me, you devil; don’t you dare strike your wife; I’ll let everyone know!”

She struggled up from the chair and ran to the side window that looked out on Thirty-fourth Street and faced an empty paddock. There were no houses within hailing distance from this window since their house took up the side of that block, and she was gratified when she felt Sam’s hand over her mouth. She spat and pushed it away, cried feebly,

“Help, help! Murder!”

Sam dropped behind her. She waited for him to speak, but he said nothing. She turned and walked to her chair. “Get me my smelling salts,” she said to him. “You’re killing me.” She opened her purse and took out a bottle of pyramidon.

“Pet, don’t take that dreadful thing!”

She laughed and pushed past him to the washstand from which she took a glass of water. Raising it, she asked him, “How do you know what’s in this?” She looked at him through the water as she drank it and slowly closed her eyes. “Now get out,” she said through the water.

Sam, turning away, saw Louie, a figure of condemnation, in the doorway. The look of concern she turned on her mother changed to rebuke when she looked at him. Sam put out his hand and said quietly, “Looloo,” but she ducked ably by him and went to Henrietta, “Mother, can I get you anything?”

“Leave me alone,” said Henrietta, “your father has done enough. Go out and close the door.” Louie did so. Sam stood irresolute in the hall. When Louie came out, he said under his breath,

“Looloodirl!”

Louie looked at him, and turning, began to walk towards the kitchen.

“Looloodirl!”

She slowed up, but entered the kitchen at this pace. He called sharply, “Louie!”

She reappeared and footed the journey towards him unwillingly.

He demanded, “Why don’t you come when your poor little Samuel calls?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know,” he said with sudden bitterness, “because your mother’s game is working after all. She is turning you against me.”

“No,” said Louie.

He looked at her pityingly, “No, I know you don’t know it, Looloo.”

“Why do you torment her?” Louie burst out blindly.

“Come into the sunroom,” he said, “I want to talk to you; no, better you and I should go and have a little talky-walky. Comb your hair and put on your shoes, and we’ll go and look at the dear old Plenty-Fish perhaps.” Plenty-Fish was what he sometimes called the Potomac.

To make her farewells, Louie went back to the veranda where the children were sitting, waiting for her. Saul said,

“Go on, Louie, the story!”

“I can’t, I’ve got to go for a walk.”

“The story, oh, finish it first,” said Evie.

Louie hesitated and then began in a husky voice, “When they came to the inn, he who had the pig’s heart could not sit down to table, but went to snuffle in a dish in the corner.”

She felt and heard without seeing the shudder of delight that went through them. Saul, who had been doing “Hrork, hrork!” like a pig, stopped, transfixed, looking ugly and comical, with a green velvet band tied round his head, holding up his short, stiff yellow hair. Ernie’s brown face was merry and shining.

“Looloodirl!”

Ernie groaned, “Pad, let her finish, let her finish first!”

“Da seevo [this evening]!” Samuel sang out, “da seevo; now Loolabulloo and Sam-the-Bold have to have a little talky-walky.” The children groaned but in a minute dashed off to other occupations. The sun was going down, and Sunday-Funday was coming to an end. They all felt it with a kind of misery: with such a fine long day and so many things to do, how could they have let it slip past like this? Tomorrow was schoolday, brief, snipped up into lessons, full of playground clashes, nasty, and without fun. There was no day going like Sunday-Funday with Sam at home.

As they walked out, the sun went down in yellow pulp and Sam’s New Jerusalem was dissolved in a milk soup, but there was a faint air on Georgetown Heights. The clouds were rising higher, but plenty of stars lay inanimate beyond the filmy sky.

“Judge not, Looloo,” said Sam in an undertone: “who knows all forgives all. I knew before marriage to Henrietta Collyer that she and I should never have come together, but a young man’s sense of honor, so often mistaken, misplaced as medieval chivalry, prevented me from making the break.” He put his arm along her shoulders.

“But Mother said she didn’t want to marry you,” Louie remarked maliciously.

Sam ignored this.

“I say, frankly, Looloo, that I believed that I could remold her life and with my wife and children make a little nucleus of splendid men and women to work for the future. That was, is, my only dream, my life hope: for I am only a dreamer in realities. I want you to understand me, Looloo: she did not even try to.”

Pale as a candle flame in the dusk, tallow-pale, he stalked along, holding her hand, and Louie looked up and beyond him at the enfeebled stars. Thus, for many years, she had seen her father’s head, a ghostly earth flame against the heavens, from her little height. Sam looked down on the moon of her face; the day-shine was enough still to light the eyeballs swimming up to him.

“You will never understand, Looloo-dirl, what I suffered: but I have battled my way through. Fate puts stones in the path of those she wants to try; she found I had stuffing in me and is satisfied.” He told her what he had suffered, tantrums, screams, fainting fits, lies, slander, the running to neighbors and family with tales, the planting in his household of an enemy and spy, Hazel Moore.

“One day she found some of my books on the table she wanted for luncheon, and she pushed them off on to the floor, hating me and them: this cut me to the heart, Looloo, because it showed me how both of them were in league against me and all that stands for man’s progress and the freedom of his spirit. Don’t think I was stiff-necked—I spoke to both of them gently, argued with the Devil—as the old Christians would say.” He told her about the “tyranny of tears”: “Men call it the tyranny of tears, it is an iron tyranny—no man could be so cruel, so devilish, as a woman with her weakness, recrimination, convenient ailments, nerves, and tears. We men are all weak as water before the primitive devices of Eve. I was patient at first, many years. You were too young then, Looloo: you did not see how kind I was, hoping for an improvement: constant dropping wears away a stone, and it was only much later that I found out hardness worked better than love. It broke my heart, nearly, to find it out. It would have broken my heart only that I had other interests. When you grow up, Looloo-dirl, you will understand what I mean, though you, Looloo, will never use those treacherous devices.”

“No,” said Louie, very good.

He pressed her hand, “You can never know the hell I have been through: you do not know what she did not only to me but to the little children. She has tortured them, turned them against me, lied to them, pretended I lied, I, who never told a lie in my life, Looloo: I want you to believe that and remember it always,” he said sternly.

“Yes,” Louie said solemnly.

“I do not know how I got through without breaking down, without my heart bursting from sorrow and shame. These heads and hearts I have come from that.”

Louie became confidential, looking up trustingly into his shadowed face, “I saw things too, Daddy: I remember those things.”

He said rather briskly, “Yes, you have seen things, too; but you cannot appreciate what I mean and will not for years to come, perhaps never. My sorrows, while all the time I was struggling upward, were more than man should bear.”

“I had sorrows too,” she piped up.

“I know, Looloo, I know,” he said hastily, squeezing her hand. “We are close to each other: you are nearly of an age to begin to understand me. I wished to live only in the regions of thought and I was forced back, dragged down to earth—no, into the slime, by a woman who is—without knowing it, I believe, poor woman—as vicious as it is possible to be, without committing crimes. But there are crimes against the spirit of man.” There was suppressed thunder in his voice. “Who tarnishes, assaults, threatens, hates the spirit of man is guilty of crime.” After a pause he said gloomily, “Even at that I am not sure she did not want to commit actual crimes. Many is the time I have gone to the Department not knowing whether I would come home to find you butchered! Yes, Looloo, that is what she would say to me when I left for work, knowing it would torture me all through the day; she would ring me up at work to say it, knowing it would prevent me from working.”