The Man Who Loved Children (63 page)

“Ambrose, the horseman, sitting on his hipbone, looked around. He saw the stars and the heads of the woods, he saw the dim shine of water, he saw the track very pale snaking it into the woods, he saw the lamplight falling through the window, and he heard the frizzling and frying, but he didn’t see Peaslop.

“ ‘Is that you Peaslop? Is that you boy? Where you gone, boy?’ he asked. ‘Is that you crying and moaning, boy?’

“ ‘No, sir, indeed, that isn’t me,’ said Peaslop. But it was so dark Ambrose couldn’t see Peaslop, not even his rolling eyes. There came another moan, and it didn’t stop. It went on softly, rising and falling, in the depth of the gully but rising more, till it had a high whine like a train under the hill.

“ ‘Why, it’s nothing but the train going down to Annapolis,’ said Ambrose. Peaslop never said a word. He just breathed hard in the dark and flapped his hands and danced: but the bubbling of the stew in the kitchen went down.

“ ‘I’m getting pretty cold, friend Peaslop,’ said the man. All this time the moaning and sighing and wheezing went on. It got louder, and animals began to scuttle through the grass. It wasn’t the wind, it was the animals, the groundhog, the weasel, the mouse, the skunk, and perhaps it was Peaslop dancing and flinging his arms. Now the crackling of the oven meat stopped, and it seemed the woman in the house was listening, too. But the moaning and crying went on and it rose always higher till suddenly it ended in a shriek.

“ ‘Hawkins is calling,’ cried the woman from the window.

“ ‘Hawkins is calling,’ cried the man from the potato patch. Then he took the hipbone in one hand and hurried to the porch and ran in the door and flung it shut, and the window went down with a bang, and the animals ran into the wood, and Ambrose sat there in the dark, in the new cold air that was beginning to blow. His horse was gone, and he had to get down to the river that night. He ran and knocked at the door and listened. But there was no sound at all. Then a voice said, “What is it?

“ ‘It’s Ambrose,’ said he.

“ ‘What do you want?’

“ ‘My horse,’ said he.

“ ‘Oh, call next summer,’ cried Peaslop; ‘we’ll give you some pickings.’

“Just then Ambrose thought he heard his horse neighing in the potato patch, and he thought he heard him snorting in the woods, and he thought he heard him trampling on the track, and he thought he heard him galloping down the hill; and when he looked back and felt with his hands, the shack had disappeared.

“ ‘Peaslop,’ he said.

“ ‘Hawkins,’ cried a voice.

“ ‘Peaslop,’ he cried, wringing his hands.

“ ‘Next summer/ said the voice.

“And the keen north wind came up over the sickly yellow woods, shrieking,
Hawkins!
”

Picturing the man on the horse’s rump against the stars, the children lay loosely in the warm night; while things just as queer as
Hawkins
went on downstairs: Henny, of course, it was not Hawkins shrieking, and Daddy was trying to give away Charles-Franklin, “Megalops.”

“He is not mine!”

“He is yours, I’ve told you a thousand times.”

“How long was it going on?”

“Don’t be a fool! I can’t stand any more of it; I’ll kill myself. You’re going crazy. No wonder you’re a laughingstock, believing every horrible bit of paper.”

“There must be some basis for this; is Megalops mine? You haven’t answered me direct.”

Why was Daddy trying to get rid of Megalops? They couldn’t understand it, but after listening for some time, they were too tired to puzzle over the whims of their fantastic father, and one after the other fell happily asleep. It had been a long and glorious day—Daddy’s birthday, the neighborhood kids, the chasings round the Wishing Tree, their presents to Daddy for which they had saved up so long, and Miss Aiden coming to see them. Then, soon the holidays would be there, and they would have a glorious time, especially as Sam was still at home; and Sam had promised to take them down to Ocean City one day during the summer to see the people and the fishermen.

“You owe money still in Washington?—Megalops—he came early—who is the man?—” and they were all asleep but Ernie and Louie. Louie stood at her window, listening for a long time to the discussion downstairs (its tone had fallen now), and then she crawled into bed. After a while she lighted the candle she had sneaked upstairs and, pulling her diary out from under the pillow (for she resolved to carry it everywhere with her now), she wrote one line, “Married by misery, seeded by hate, bringing forth screams, feeding in insults.” Tired and fully content, she put out the light, when she heard Evie stir in her corner. Evie’s bed was hidden by the central chimney piece. Louie slipped out of bed, in the dark, and peered round the masonry. Evie was sitting up in bed. “Why aren’t you asleep, Evie?”

Evie said nothing, but started to sniffle. Louie said sharply, “What’s the matter?”

“I want to be sick,” said Evie, beginning to cry.

“You mean in your stomach?”

“No-ho-ho!”

“Oh, stop it, you silly girl.”

Evie began to sob inconsolably, lifting up her head like a little dog about to howl, “Ho-ho-ho!”

Louie got angry with her, “Tell me what’s the matter? How can I do anything if you don’t tell me?”

“I don’t know-ho-ho!”

“I’m going back to bed!”

“I’m too tired! There’s too much noise.”

Louie instinctively took a quick step and put her arms round Evie and kissed her on the head, “Shh-shh! Go to sleep. You had too much fun. Ssh!”

But Evie had opened the sluice gates, “I can’t, I can’t.”

“Ssh! I’ll tell you a story.”

This had no effect. Louie continued quickly, “I’ll tell you The Gunny-Wolf. ‘And the little girl went pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat!’ ” Evie paused in her sobbing to listen, for this had always been her favorite ritual. “Ugh-huh!” she sobbed. “ ‘And the wolf came galloping pickety-pack, pickety-pack. “Good evening, child!” “Good evening, wolf!” ’ ”

Presently Evie consented to lie down, and though she listened half resentfully, she stopped crying. Louie got back into bed as soon as she could, for she had to think about Miss Aiden.

But the strange couple were still blackguarding each other below.

“I was a goodlooking girl before I met you!”

“Be quiet: perhaps the children are awake!”

“Is there anything they haven’t heard? You tell them enough about your women: why can’t they hear what you have to say?”

“Because I am an innocent father, and you are a guilty wife.”

There was a cackling laugh, and Henny said, “It’s a dirty lie; who but a dirty liar writes anonymous letters?”

Sam’s voice said, “Henrietta, I admit I despise the anonymous letter and its author—”

“But this time it suits you because you’re playing around with one of your childlike souls, one of those innocent girls who go out with other women’s husbands.”

“Henrietta, I forbid you to talk like that, with your dirty society-woman’s mind!”

“You think I don’t know about Gillian Roebuck and your secretaries? If you didn’t go to bed with them, you’re worse still, you see, according to the way I was brought up.” Here came Henny’s high chromatic artificial laugh.

Louie fell asleep. When she woke much later, there was a strange stillness in the house. She could see, through the open door, that the light was still on downstairs. Had they killed each other? She got up and stole to the head of the stairs; there was, in fact, a sort of scuffling, and Louie listened, in sacred terror, leaning on the stairhead: would they do for each other at last, would she come down and find them in pools of blood? She hoped so. She began to think busily—what would they do for food and shelter if both parents were gone? Aunt Hassie would take Evie and perhaps the little one, Chappy; everyone liked Ernie and he could find a home. Old Ellen would take one-there would be homes for all. (The twins were a problem—who wanted to be saddled with two boys at once?) She would, of course, go to the Bakens, live on the banks of the Jordan (the Shenandoah), and get a job watching the river rise and fall, and she would never have to think about the Pollits or Collyers again in her life.

Henny gave a fretful hysterical laugh, “Oh, leave me alone, you make me sick,” and there was again a violent struggle, and then she heard Sam groan. That was it! She began to creep downstairs, expecting to see Henny kneeling in the lighted common room, with Sam’s old-fashioned razor in her hand and Sam lying on the floor, with a gaping wound in his neck. But there was nobody in the common room. A broken cloisonne vase lay on the floor. Louie stood at the door of Henny’s room for a while with her heart beating fast, and heard Henny weeping, but she did not dare go in and find out if and how murder had been done. She wandered out into the yard, while the breathing, warm, bloody house lay behind her. Presently she came back and crawled back into bed. In the morning she would look: she would be the first to find the bodies; now she was too tired to go through the melodrama of discovery and questions. She went to sleep with visions of herself comforting the children in the morning, running to the neighbors, sending telegrams. So sure was she of her role that when she woke in a sunny morning and heard her father’s crisp, gay voice shouting to the boys, and smelled the customary smell of fire, she thought she was still dreaming. She listened while her heart began to throb again! The night before had been a dream then. She got out of bed and looked out the window: yes, there was Sam as large as life, like a great red and yellow apple bounding about.

When Louie came downstairs there was a letter for her from Clare (though she had seen Clare at school yesterday and would see her today) with writing all over the envelope, in her tiny eccentric scribble. In one corner was written, “Haste post haste!”; in the second, “Oh, Louie, the night is long!”; in a third, “Toothache on the right side, knowing you are off at Spa House, that’s on the left side!” and round the stamp was written in minute letters, “Oh, little stamp, I have writer’s cramp, but I’ll put one thing yet there; though they bar, mark and blur you, don’t let it deter you, just stick till you get there!” On the stuck-down flap was written,

Pity poor Clare! Her summers are spent

In thinking of mortgages, paying rent:

Not so Louie! With curtain furled

On a stage well set, Lou shook the world!

The children began gathering round like crabs after a piece of bait, to laugh and peer at Clare’s well-known comicalities. Sam came peering in, laughing, “She must be a nitwit to write to you in the evening when she’ll see you in the morning—why can’t it keep? And you must be a nitwit too: the Amorous Nitwits!” At which everyone crowed with laughter, and Louie laughed till the tears ran down her blushing cheeks. She was laughing to prevent further questions and to avoid saying that she had written Clare a letter in school yesterday afternoon and delivered it herself on the way home. In this letter she had mildly said, “Everyone thinks I am sullen, surly, sulky, grim; but I am the two hemispheres of Ptolemaic marvels, I am lost Atlantis risen from the sea, the Western Isles of infinite promise, the apples of the Hesperides and daily make the voyage to Cytherea, island of snaky trees and abundant shade with leaves large and dripping juice, the fruit that is my heart, but I have a thousand hearts hung on every trees, yes, my heart drips alone every fence paling. I am mad with my heart which beats too much in the world and falls in love at every instant with every reflection that glimmers in it.” And much more of this, which she was accustomed to write to Clare, stuff almost without meaning, but yet which seemed to have the entire meaning of life for her, and which made Clare exclaim a dozen times,

“Oh, Louie, I can’t believe it, when I get your letters, you are the same person: when I meet you at school I keep looking at you in surprise!”

Louie would quietly reply, hanging her head, “Oh, I am afraid that I will go from the head down; I think I will go mad,” to which Clare again replied, “I would give the top of my head to have the madness of your little finger.”

These answers would fill Louie with melancholy, for she would suddenly see that she had done nothing, and she did not see how she could ever do anything. She would suddenly see a theater large as the world, in which herself, a great coconut shy, was the butt of a hundred thousand shrieks, hoots, and obscene jokes, a great vile blob of a fat girl covered with mud.

Very different from the political girls, the grinds, and the pretty boy-loving girls, Clare and Louie expended themselves in days of mad fervor about nothing at all.

Louie spent half an hour grinning and moping and mowing over this letter of Clare’s, forgot to put on the oatmeal, to take her bath, or do anything else. Even the tea had not been made. Henny remained incommunicable in her room, and when Louie at last came with the tea and knocked at the door, Henny shouted, “Whoever it is, go away!”

“It’s your tea, Mother!”

“Put it down outside the door and go away!”

“Don’t let it get cold!”

“I’ll pour it all over your filthy face, if you don’t go away.”

Louie retreated, realizing Henny had one of her worst days before her. She made the oatmeal and got ready for school in a pensive mood. Evie sensed storm too, and when Ernie insulted her (as he always did, for there was a grudge from the womb, between them), she began crying quietly. Sam was meanwhile walking about outside, with his head in the air, and evidently cogitating over something very sad. His first hallooing had worn out. He came and stood beside Louie while she was making the oatmeal and, after a while, said in his finest violoncello tones, “You and I can readily understand, Looloo-dirl, the psychological storms and passions which poor Henny goes through, and we can have no feeling of reciprocated or retaliatory hate!”

“Why do we have to go through it?” asked Louie.

“We have a home—you have brothers and a sister! That is the only consideration for me,” said Sam gently.

“Why did you have so many children?” Louie turned and faced him.

He shook his head gently, “Looloo, later on you will understand. A month before our marriage, I knew it would be a well-nigh hopeless union, yet so great is a young man’s idea of what is honorable and sporting that I could not renege: and so I determined that the union would be fruitful and from misery would come much happiness and splendid men and women; the woman would not count, I thought: I would forget what I could not mend.”