The Man Who Loved Children (40 page)

After a little while, they heard Old Charlie’s voice on the stairs descending slowly and in a moment he appeared, gallantly bending and bringing in Henny by the hand. Henny had waited to fix a bit of lace round her throat with a pearl brooch and to brush up her hair, so that as she came in swaying slowly on her hips under her new rosepink flowered smock, with a touch of rouge on her cheeks, she looked impressive. Her eyes were set into her skull and her face drawn, but her reluctance and pride gave her a matronly dignity. The men all rose except Sam who was sunk in a brown study and who anyhow despised such courtesy as “a foreign mannerism.” When his father jogged him on the arm, as much as to say, “You get up too, Sammy,” he merely looked round indifferently; and he refused to rise. At this, his brothers, Leonard, Peter and Saul, busied themselves, pulling out the chair for Henny, inquiring after her health, speaking sharply to one of the children in order to cover Sam’s clumsiness. At the same moment there was a bustling and twitteration amongst the women to prevent remark and to make Henny feel that she was wanted. Sam sat silent till Henny was seated. From her seat she sent a look of thunder bowling along to the other end, to her morose spouse; then tossing her head slightly, affected to ignore him and began a society clatter with Lennie, her brother-in-law, a leaner edition of Sam, but a goodfellow, a Masonic brother, a cocktail mixer.

Henny had not gone to the train or been on the porch to greet Sam when he came from it, surrounded by all his children. Her sickness, the explanations she had to give about the money, and the scoldings she feared about the untidiness of the place drowned her in a nausea so deep that when Sam had come to the door of her bedroom where she sat she had only given him a look of hollow melancholy; and he, after a long look moist with angry, pitiful tears, had said, “Hullo, Henny,” and looked away. There was so much to untangle, and Henny felt her hands nerveless. She would never again try to knit even one stitch in the long chain of their married life. She hated all that was to come. She was glad that the Pollits had surrounded him and put off the dark hour; and yet she resented their joy at him, when to her, he meant the day of reckoning. Lennie Pollit was handsome, a successful traveling salesman in men’s shirts, and an angel to his wife, Jinny. Lennie and Jinny gave parties, liked a good time, and had a little money. Why did I have to pick the only Pollit mad and silly with ambition? Henny had often thought. But now she had swum beyond all Pollitry and their considerations: she was on the edge of the maelstrom and was about to sink down, down, circling. She put her hand on the edge of the table and looked round her for a glass of water, which Lennie hastened to pour for her. Henny said, “I felt faint, but it’s all right now.” Jinny asked her if she would like to lie down, but she refused, “I’m here now; I might as well stay.”

There was a two-tiered iced cake made by Jinny; potato-and-egg salad with homemade mayonnaise, also made by Jinny; delicatessen and lemonade, little iced cakes with chocolate tears upon them, made by Henny; raspberry wheels, made by Henny; popovers made by Bonnie and a large box of chocolates given by Jo; contributions from the whole family in the shape of edibles; and down the table, three large pitchers, one transparent, one blue, and one pink, containing a rose-colored liquor with fruit floating in it. This mysterious drink intrigued the children beyond expression. They kept swallowing and looking at the glassware. Before the children were only lemonade glasses, but before the adults were wineglasses. The children suspected that even on this occasion the sherbet of paradise was to be drunk under their dry lips by the loudmouthed, money-pocketed monsters who had them in thrall. Why didn’t these giants ravish the table, send the food flying besides, gobble, guff, grab, and gourmandize? To be bestial giants with the power of sherbet and also to exhibit such mean-spirited stinginess towards their own appetites was a conundrum the children could never solve. Let them once be such giants, let them even have the privilege of Louie, and they would not leave a crumb on a plate nor a drop in a bottle. The children sighed internally and ate as hard as they could hoping by their hunger, to soften the miserliness of their elders.

“What’s that?” exclaimed Ernie, overcome by desire, pointing to the fascinating pitcher, “What’s this, Auntie?” The cruelty of tyrants must be broken down somehow.

“Not for you, Tommy Tucker,” said Bonnie hastily, hushing him with a grimace.

Lennie got up and, seizing the pitcher at a signal from Jinny, then went round pouring out the Badminton Cup into the wineglasses.

“What is this?” inquired Sam abstractedly.

“Badminton Cup,” Lennie said. Sam said nothing, never having heard of such a thing. When the glass pitcher was empty, Lennie started on the other. No one had touched it. When Lennie got back to his place and all were provided for, he picked up his glass and said in his best Freemasons’-toastmaster voice,

“Old Oddfellow, Brothers and Sisters, Sons and Daughters, before we swallow a drop, let us drink a health to the man we celebrate—to SAM, our wanderer returned!”

All stood up but Henny, but Henny took hold of her glass out of politeness. Sam looked round at them smiling in a grave style, saying almost
sotto voce,
“No, no; you’re wonderful people—no, no!”

Lennie repeated, “To Sam!” and the whole family intoned it, in a beautiful response, “To Sam!” They took mouthfuls of the claret cup and a few of the younger ones choked. Old Charles said by himself, “To my youngest son, Samuel Clemens Pollit!” and drank his at a draught. “Not a bad cup!” he nodded to Bonnie. Sam’s bloodshot eyes moistened again and he fingered his own glass thoughtfully, as does a man accustomed to speeches, smiling faintly at several of them in turn. Jo, of course, shouted, “Speech, speech,” stamped on the floor, beat on the table till the tableware rang again, and the little ones took it up foolishly, crying like a lot of young crows, “Speech, speech!”

“All right, boys and girls,” said Sam, at which they all fell silent and sat down irregularly. Then he got up and told them how very, very glad he was to be home again, home again, jiggity-jig; gladder than they ever would know, although they might try to guess, knowing him and how much he loved them all and particularly how much he had always loved his native land and his splendid, flashing Washington, and his own Tohoga House and his tribe, flesh of his flesh, most particularly; and the work nearest to his hand. He did not object, he said, to wandering in the highways and byways of the world, as a student of men and manners, to receive enlightenment, and spread it again; and when Fate held out her hand, he made it a rule to take that hand with whatever it held, for Fate always had a lesson for him, just as every book that fell on its face open, and every scrap of muddy newsprint blowing in the wind and even every shop sign might hold a message for him, because the Word was sacred to him; and whatever that message might be, he was not one to turn his face away, but he smiled at Fate, for he believed Fate was on his side.

Then he lifted his glass and said quietly, “To you all, my friends, friends of my own tribe!” and put the glass to his lips, tasting it mildly, afraid it was one of those saccharine women’s drinks. But he, as soon, put it down, looking round, affronted, and he said to Bonnie accusingly, “Bonniferous, what is in this? There is alcohol in this?”

She flushed and acknowledged petulantly, “It’s claret cup, Sam; it won’t do you any harm—it wouldn’t do Tommy any harm, only on account of your views we didn’t give it to the children. There’s so little, just enough to give it a taste on this festive occasion; you can’t be so ultrazealous—it’s a fruit drink really!”

Sternly he said to her, “Bonnie, you know I never touch alcohol, nor allow it in my house!”

Henny’s face twitched with a sarcastic smile.

“Your brothers and sisters like it!” cried Bonnie.

“I am sorry it is on my table,” he told her coldly and sat down. He sulkily picked up his spoon and fork and messed up a piece of cake; but in a minute he thrust it aside, saying in a spoiled way to his father, “This has quite taken away my appetite: why can’t I be obeyed? I thought this occasion was to give me pleasure?”

“A little tolerance hurts no one,” Old Charlie said, with embarrassment, since his son had often rowed him about his own nipping and tasting.

“I refuse to discuss it here,” Sam told him harshly.

Old Charles looked at him for a moment; but his face softened again and, with a roll of gay abandon, noticing that the others hesitated to sip their claret cup, he cried,

“Bonnie, my girl, more of the cup that cheers but not inebriates.

The Good Book says, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die!’ ” and in his best glee-club voice he began to troll,

A boat, a boat, haste to the ferry!

Let us go over and make merry!

To laugh and quaff and drink good sherry!

Sam began to pick at his food again, refusing to be drawn. The family took up the round and rang the changes round the table, Lennie singing seconds, Old Charles’ voice growing young again as they sang. Even Sam could not resist the charm of the family singsong, oldest Pollit custom, and when his turn came, he took up the song, “A boat, a boat, haste to the ferry!” while Bonnie, at his left, was singing soprano, “Let us go over and make merry!” This removed the dampener that Sam’s strong principles had put on the cheer; in any case, they knew Sam’s fortes and foibles of old and easily forgave him.

Then Jinny and Bonnie started to discuss the recipe for the Badminton Cup, and jolly Lennie said, “Well, if my little brother won’t drink it, Bon, I will drink it for him!” and in the general good humor even Sam recognized that he was swamped. Brother Ebby busied himself now with food and drink seeing that “one and all were in a mood to rejoice,” and when Sam, seeing Henny take some of the Cup, said sternly, “Henny, don’t drink that, especially in your condition!” and Henny, merely smirking, tossed off a whole glass, almost no one took any notice, for the same pebble cannot ripple the millpond twice.

Henny smirked even more, seeing this wildcat, hedgerow, wild-weed, slum-artisan, cheap-Baltimore family grow more jolly; seeing Ebby, poor ship’s carpenter, who had an imbecile for a wife and one doddle-headed child, and gaptoothed Benbow, with that strumpet girl, Leslie (as Henny put it), and two dumb boys, and old soak Charles, and garage-owner Peter (who had actually begun with a junk cart and three cowbells collecting old bedsprings and fat women’s bulging corsets!), and Bonnie (obviously sleeping with some man who was doing her dirt) and Jinny (whose pert daughter Essie needed her face slapped) and Jo (whose hair was like a haystack in a fit) and all their weedy, rank children getting merrier and merrier on the dungheap that was their life. Born in the muck, thriving in the muck, and proud of the muck, thought Henrietta! Well, it’s well to be some people and not know how badly off you are! Let them rot, for all I care. How she had fretted at these people who didn’t care if they had an old automobile, and didn’t care if they lived cheap, and didn’t care if their daughters went to work in hat factories, and didn’t care if their cousins married when they were two months pregnant, as long as they lived and crawled fatly over the earth! Despising them, she despised herself, who had been married to them, because she had been useless as a belle, too hysterical and featherbrained to be married as a possible financial catch in Baltimore. Poor Henrietta, thought the Pollits, who never doubted a moment that she felt degraded by them, after her fine upbringing. Ebby gravely brought round the jug to her shoulder while Lennie encouraged her by pushing across to her a plate of true-lovers’-knots in pastry, made by Ebby’s wife, Emma, “Eat and drink, Henrietta,” and he gave her a bright blue look.

“Sam,” said Old Charlie, at the other end of the table, “live and let live; we don’t know why we’re here, and it’s a good rule to let live, till we find out!” He took another swig of the claret cup, which was beginning to blush his ancient mind.

Sam was unhappy and irritable, “Father, you know what my principles are. Fermented and spirituous liquors dethrone reason, deform morals, and disgrace social gatherings. You know I stick to my principles through thick and thin. You know, you all know, I have never faltered in what I believe to be the right. Why do you cross me? Today of all days! In Singapore I saw what alcohol can do to the best of men; the white man in the East is soaked in alcohol. There isn’t a decent liver goes out there but becomes a slave of his liver; as for its effect on women—our ministering angel becomes a harridan and—worse! You must forgive me.”

Henny scrutinized him closely during this speech and at the end laughed shortly and put the second glass to her lips.

“Henny, put down that glass or leave the room: my children are here!”

“Samuel!” cried Bonnie, horrified. “Pet!” she pleaded, and Jinny said, “Sam, Sam, Sam, don’t break up the party!”

“You heard me, Henny,” Sam said with flushed face, “you all heard me.”

Henny laughed on a high, artificial note. Her voice cracked as she said, “I heard! You wouldn’t hear me bellowing that way across the table insulting my own guests—you and your Singapore society manners!”

She shut her eyes, rolling her head back in that ugly, incredibly theatrical way of hers, then snapped open the heavy lids, again giving them all a smoking look.

“He writes letters home about the fine ladies who befriended him while he was away, Lady Battersby, Lady Modore, Lady Muckymuck, and Sir William Patmybackandl’llscratchyours, with all his fine friends in fine feathers, and this is the real way he is at home, the great I-Am. Trying to boss me about when you’ve only just got off the boat. Probably you think I’m that nigger secretary you had or his nigger wife!” She laughed insolently and took another sip of the glass, “I’d be ashamed to insult my guests at my own parties, especially when it all came out of their purses—but that doesn’t bother him, he can’t drink your wine, he’s too pure. He’s so pure that he just came back from the sluts of Singapore, who have the staggers from gin-slings, and he wants to order me round the way he orders those wretched beggars, Chinks, and niggers the government gives him. The family carpetbagger.”