CHAPTER XXXI
If there were any cloud upon his horizon, it was the thought of Laura. She had barely been to the house since Edith had come back to town; and at times, especially in the days when things had looked dark for Roger, he had caught himself reproaching this giddy-gaddy youngest child, so engrossed in her small "ménage" that apparently she could not spare a thought for her widowed sister. Laura on her return from abroad had brought as a gift for Edith a mourning gown from Paris, a most alluring creation—so much so, in fact, that Edith had felt it simply indecent, insulting, and had returned it to her sister with a stilted note of thanks. But Roger did not know of this. There were so many ways, he thought, in which Laura might have been nice to Edith. She had a gorgeous limousine in which she might so easily have come and taken her sister off on little trips uptown. But no, she kept her car to herself. And from her small apartment, where a maid whom she had brought from Rome dressed her several times each day, that limousine rushed her noiselessly forth, gay and wild as ever, immaculate and elegant, radiant and very rich. To what places did she go? What new friends was she making? What was Laura up to?
He did not like her manner, one evening when she came to the house. As he helped her off with her cloak, a sleek supple leopard skin which fitted her figure like a glove, he asked,
"Where's Hal this evening?" And she answered lightly,
"Oh, don't ask me what he does with himself."
"You mean, I suppose," said Edith, with quiet disapproval, "that he is rushed to death this year with all this business from the war."
"Yes, it's business," Laura replied, as she deftly smoothed and patted her soft, abundant, reddish hair. "And it's war, too," she added.
"What do you mean?" her father asked. He knew what she meant, war with her husband. But before Laura could answer him, Edith cut in hastily, for two of her children were present. At dinner she turned the talk to the war. But even on this topic, Laura's remarks were disturbing. She did not consider the war wholly bad—by no means, it had many good points. It was clearing away a lot of old rubbish, customs, superstitions and institutions out of date. "Musty old relics," she called them. She spoke as though repeating what someone else had told her. Laura with her chicken's mind could never have thought it all out by herself. When asked what she meant, she was smilingly vague, with a glance at Edith's youngsters. But she threw out hints about the church and even Christianity, as though it were falling to pieces. She spoke of a second Renaissance, "a glorious pagan era" coming. And then she exploded a little bomb by inquiring of Edith.
"What do you think the girls over there are going to do for husbands, with half the marriageable men either killed or hopelessly damaged? They're not going to be nuns all their lives!"
Again her sister cut her off, and the rest of the brief evening was decidedly awkward. Yes, she was changing, growing fast. And Roger did not like it. Here she was spending money like water, absorbed in her pleasures, having no baby, apparently at loose ends with her husband, and through it all so cocksure of herself and her outrageous views about war, and smiling about them with such an air, and in her whole manner, such a tone of amused superiority. She talked about a world for the strong, bits of gabble from Nietzsche and that sort of rot; she spoke blithely of a Rome reborn, the "Wings of the Eagles" heard again. This part of it she had taken, no doubt, from her new Italian friend, her husband's shrapnel partner.
Pshaw! What was Laura up to?
But that was only one evening. It was not repeated, another month went quickly by, and Roger had soon shaken it from him, for he had troubles enough at home. One daughter at a time, he had thought. And as the dark clouds close above him had cleared, the other cloud too had drifted away, until it was small, just on the horizon, far away from Roger's house. What was Laura up to? He barely ever thought of that now.
But one night when he came home, Edith, who sat in the living room reading aloud to her smaller boys, gave him a significant look which warned him something had happened. And turning to take off his overcoat, in the hall he almost stumbled upon a pile of hand luggage, two smart patent leather bags, a hat trunk and a sable cloak.
"Hello," he exclaimed. "What's this? Who's here?"
"Laura," Edith answered. "She's up in Deborah's room, I think—they've been up there for over an hour." Roger looked indignantly in at his daughter.
"What has happened?" he asked.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you," Edith replied. "They didn't seem to need me. They made it rather plain, in fact. Another quarrel, I presume. She came into the house like a whirlwind, asked at once for Deborah and flew up to Deborah's room."
"Pshaw!" Roger heavily mounted the stairs. He at least did not feel like flying. A whirlwind, eh—a nice evening ahead!
Meanwhile, in her room upstairs Deborah sat motionless, sternly holding her feelings down, while in a tone now kindly but more often full of a sharp dismay, she threw out question after question to Laura who was walking the floor in a quick, feverish sort of way, with gestures half hysterical, her voice bursting with emotions of mingled fright and rage.
"No, this time it's divorce!" she declared, at the end of her first outburst, in which she had told in fragments of her husband's double life. "I've stood it long enough! I'm through!"
"You mean you don't care for him," Deborah said. She was fighting for time to think it out. "You want a divorce. Very well, Laura dear—but how do you think you are going to get it? The laws are rather strict in this state. They allow but one cause. Have you any proofs?"
"No, I haven't—but I don't need any proofs! He wants it as badly as I do! Wait—I'll give you his very words!" Laura's face grew white with fury. "'It's entirely up to you, Sweetie'—the beast!—'You can have any kind of divorce you like. You can let me bring suit on the quiet or you can try to fight me in court, climb up into the witness chair in front of the reporters and tell them all about yourself!'"
"Your husband is to bring suit against you?" Deborah's voice was loud and harsh. "For God's sake, Laura, what do you mean?"
"Mean? I mean that he has proofs! He has used a detective, the mean little cur, and he's treating me like the dirt under his feet! Just as though it were one thing for a man, and another—quite—for a woman! He even had the nerve to be mad, to get on a high horse, call me names! Turn me!—turn me out on the street!" Deborah winced as though from a blow. "Oh, it was funny, funny!" Laura was almost sobbing now.
"Stop, this minute!" Deborah said. "You say that you've been doing—what he has?" she demanded.
"Why shouldn't I? What do you know about it? Are you going to turn against me, too?"
"I am—pretty nearly—"
"Oh, good God!" Laura tossed up her hands and went on with her walking.
"Quiet! Please try to be clear and explain."
"Explain—to you? How can I? You don't understand—you know nothing about it—all you know about is schools! You're simply a nun when it comes to this. I see it now—I didn't before—I thought you a modern woman—with your mind open to new ideas. But it isn't, it seems, when it comes to a pinch—it's shut as tight as Edith's is—"
"Yes, tight!"
"Thank you very much! Then for the love of Heaven will you kindly leave me alone! I'll have a talk with father!"
"You will not have a talk with father—"
"I most certainly will—and he'll understand! He's a man, at least—and he led a man's life before he was married!"
"Laura!"
"You can't see it in him—but I can!"
"You'll say not a word to him, not one word! He has had enough this year as it is!"
"Has he? Then I'm sorry! If you were any help to me—instead of acting like a nun—"
"Will you please stop talking like a fool?"
"I'm not! I'm speaking the truth and you know it! You know no more about love like mine than a nun of the middle ages! You needn't tell me about Allan Baird. You think you're in love with him, don't you? Well then, I'll tell you that you're not—your love is the kind that can wait for years—because it's cold, it's cold, it's cold—it's all in your mind and your reason! And so I say you're no help to me now! Here—look at yourself in the glass over there! You're just plain angry—frightened!"
"Yes—I am—I'm frightened." While she strove to think clearly, to form some plan, she let her young sister talk rapidly on:
"I know you are! And you can't be fair! You're like nearly all American women—married or single, young or old—you're all of you scared to death about sex—just as your Puritan mothers were! And you leave it alone—you keep it down—you never give it a chance—you're afraid! But I'm not afraid—and I'm living my life! And let me tell you I'm not alone! There are hundreds and thousands doing the same—right here in New York City to-night! It's been so abroad for years and years—in Rome and Berlin, in Paris and London—and now, thank God, it has come over here! If our husbands can do it, why can't we? And we are—we're starting—it's come with the war! You think war is hell and nothing else, don't you—but you're wrong! It's not only killing men—it's killing a lot of hypocrisies too—it's giving a jolt to marriage! You'll see what the women will do soon enough—when there aren't enough men any longer—"
"Suppose you stop this tirade and tell me exactly what you've done," Deborah interrupted. A simple course of action had just flashed into her mind.
"All right, I will. I'm not ashamed. I've given you this 'tirade' to show you exactly how I feel—that it's not any question of sin or guilt or any musty old rubbish like that! I know I'm right! I know just what I'm doing!"
"Who's the man? That Italian?"
"Yes."
"Where is he?"
"Right here in New York."
"Does he mean to stand by you?"
"Of course he does."
"Yes, he will—the minute I'm free from my beast of a husband!"
"And your husband will keep his suit quiet, you said, if you agree not to fight him."
"Yes."
Deborah rose abruptly.
"Then will you stay right here to-night, and leave this matter to me?" she asked.
"What do you mean to do?"
"See your husband."
"What for? When?"
"To-night, if I can. I want to be sure."
Laura looked for the moment nonplussed.
"And what of my wishes?" she inquired.
"Your wishes," said Deborah steadily. "You want a divorce, don't you—so do I. And you want it quiet—and so do I. I want it so hard that I want to make sure." Deborah's tone was kinder now, and she came over close to her sister. "Look here, Laura, if I've been hard, forgive me—please—and let me help. I'm not so narrow as you think. I've been through a good deal of this before—downtown, I mean, with girls in my school. They come to me, we have long talks. Maybe I am a nun—as you say—but I'm one with a confessional. Not for sins," she added, as Laura looked up angrily. "Sins don't interest me very much. But troubles do. And heaven knows that marriage is one," she said with a curious bitterness. "And when it has failed and there's no love left—as in your case—I'm for divorce. Only—" her wide sensitive lips quivered just a little, "I'm sorry it had to come like this. But I love you, dear, and I want to help, I want to see you safely through. And while I'm doing it, if we can, I want to keep dad out of it—at least until it's settled." She paused a moment. "So if you agree, I'll go to your husband. I want to be sure, absolutely, just what we can count on. And until I come back, stay here in my room. You don't want to talk to father and Edith—"
"Most certainly not!" Laura muttered.
"Good. Then stay here until I return. I'll send you up some supper."
"I don't want any, thank you."
Laura went and threw herself on the bed, while her sister finished dressing.
"It's decent of you, Deborah." Her voice was muffled and relaxed. "I wasn't fair," she added. "I'm sorry for some of the things I said."
"About me and marriage?" Deborah looked at herself in the glass in a peculiar searching way. A slight spasm crossed her features. "I'm not sure but that you were right. At times I feel far from certain," she said. Laura lifted her head from the pillow, watched her sister a moment, dropped back.
"Don't let this affect you, Deborah."
"Oh, don't worry, dearie." And Deborah moved toward the door. "My affair is just mine, you see, and this won't make any difference."
But in her heart she knew it would. What an utter loathing she had to-night for all that people meant by sex! Suddenly she was quivering, her limbs and her whole body hot.
"You say I'm cold," she was thinking. "Cold toward Allan, calm and cool, nothing but mind and reason! You say it means little to me, all that! But if I had had trouble with Allan, would I have come running home to talk? Wouldn't I have hugged it tight? And isn't that love? What do you know of me and the life I've led? Do you know how it feels to want to work, to be something yourself, without any man? And can't that be a passion? Have you had to live with Edith here and see what motherhood can be, what it can do to a woman? And now you come with another side, just as narrow as hers, devouring everything else in sight! And because I'm a little afraid of that, for myself and all I want to do, you say I don't know what love is! But I do! And my love's worth more than yours! It's deeper, richer, it will last!... Then why do I loathe it all to-night?... But I don't, I only loathe your side!... But yours is the very heart of it!... All right, then what am I going to do?"
She was going slowly down the stairs. She stopped for a moment, frowning.
CHAPTER XXXII
On the floor below she met her father, who was coming out of his room. He looked at her keenly:
"What's the trouble?"
"Laura's here," she answered. "Trouble again with her husband. Better leave her alone for the present—she's going to stay in my room for a while."
"Very well," her father grunted, and they went down to dinner. There Deborah was silent, and Edith did most of the talking. Edith, quite aware of the fact that Laura and all Laura's ways were in disgrace for the moment, and that she and her ways with her children shone by the comparison, was bright and sweet and tactful. Roger glanced at her more than once, with approval and with gratitude for the effort she was making to smooth over the situation. Deborah rose before they had finished.
"Where are you off to?" Roger asked.
"Oh, there's something I have to attend to—"
"School again this evening, dear?" inquired Edith cheerfully, but her sister was already out of the room. She looked at her father with quiet concern. "I'm sorry she has to be out to-night—to-night of all nights," she murmured.
"Humph!" ejaculated her father. This eternal school business of Deborah's was beginning to get on his nerves. Yes, just a little on his nerves! Why couldn't she give up one evening, just one, and get Laura out of this snarl she was in? He heard her at the telephone, and presently she came back to them.
"Oh, Edith," she said casually, "don't send any supper up to Laura. She says she doesn't want any to-night. And ask Hannah to put a cot in my room. Will you?"
"Yes, dear, I'll attend to it."
"Thanks." And again she left them. In silence, when the front door closed, Edith looked at her father. This must be rather serious, Roger thought excitedly. So Laura was to stay all night, while Deborah gallivanted off to those infernal schools of hers! He had little joy in his paper that night. The news of the world had such a trick of suddenly receding a million miles away from a man the minute he was in trouble. And Roger was in trouble. With each slow tick of the clock in the hall he grew more certain and more disturbed. An hour passed. The clock struck nine. With a snort he tossed his paper aside.
"Well, Edith," he said glumly, "how about some chess this evening?" In answer she gave him a quick smile of understanding and sympathy.
"All right, father dear." And she fetched the board. But they had played only a short time when Deborah's latchkey was heard in the door. Roger gave an angry hitch to his chair. Soon she appeared in the doorway.
"May I talk to you, father?" she asked.
"I suppose so." Roger scowled.
"You'll excuse us, Edith?" she added.
"Oh, assuredly, dear." And Edith rose, looking very much hurt. "Of course, if I'm not needed—"
At this her father scowled again. Why couldn't Deborah show her sister a little consideration?
"What is it?" he demanded.
"Suppose we go into the study," she said.
He followed her there and shut the door.
"Well?" he asked, from his big leather chair. Deborah had remained standing.
"I've got some bad news," she began.
"What is it?" he snapped. "School burnt down?" Savagely he bit off a cigar.
"I've just had a talk with Harold," she told him. He shot a glance of surprise and dismay.
"Have, eh—what's it all about?"
"It's about a divorce," she answered.
The lighted match dropped from Roger's hand. He snatched it up before it was out and lit his cigar, and puffing smoke in a vigilant way again he eyed his daughter.
"I've done what I could," she said painfully, "but they seem to have made up their minds."
"Then they'll unmake 'em," he replied, and he leaned forward heavily. "They'll unmake 'em," he repeated, in a thick unnatural tone. "I'm not a'goin' to hear to it!" In a curious manner his voice had changed. It sounded like that of a man in the mountains, where he had been born and raised. This thought flashed into Deborah's mind and her wide resolute mouth set hard. It would be very difficult.
"I'm afraid this won't do, father dear. Whether you give your consent or not—"
"Wun't, wun't it! You wait and see if it wun't!" Deborah came close to him.
"Suppose you wait till you understand," she admonished sternly.
"All right, I'm waiting," he replied. She felt herself trembling deep inside. She did not want him to understand, any more than she must to induce him to keep out of this affair.
"To begin with," she said steadily, "you will soon see yourself, I think, that they fairly loathe the sight of each other—that there is no real marriage left."
"That's fiddlesticks!" snapped Roger. "Just modern talk and new ideas—ideas you're to blame for! Yes, you are—you put 'em in her head—you and your gabble about woman's rights!" He was angry now. He was glad he was angry. He'd just begun!
"If you want me to leave her alone," his daughter cut in sharply, "just say so! I'll leave it all to you!" And she saw him flinch a little. "What would be your idea?" she asked.
"My idea? She's to go straight home and make up with him!"
She hesitated. Then she said:
"Suppose there's another woman."
"Then he's a beast," growled Roger.
"And yet you want her to live with him?"
He scowled, he felt baffled, his mind in a whirl. And a wave of exasperation suddenly swept over him.
"Well, why shouldn't she?" he cried. "Other wives have done it—millions! Made a devilish good success of it, too—made new men of their husbands! Let her show him she's ready to forgive! That's only Christian, ain't it? Hard? Of course it's hard on her! But can you tell me one hard thing she has ever had to do in her life? Hasn't it been pleasure, pleasure from the word go? Can't she stand something hard? Don't we all of us have to? I do—God knows—with all of you!" And he puffed his cigar in a fury. His daughter smiled. She saw her chance.
"Father," she said, in a low clear voice, "You've had so many troubles. Why not leave this one to me? You can't help—no matter how hard you try—you'll only make it worse and worse. And you've been through so much this year—you've earned the right to be quiet. And that's what they want, both of them—they both want it quiet, without any scandal." Her father glared, for he knew about scandal, he handled it in his office each day. "Let me manage this—please," she said. And her offer tempted him. He struggled for a moment.
"No, I won't!" he burst out in reply. "I want quiet right enough, but not at the price of her peace with her God!" This sounded foolish, he felt that it did, and he flushed and grew the angrier. "No, I won't," he said stubbornly. "She'll go back to him if I take her myself. And what's more," he added, rising, "she's to go straight back to-night!"
"She is not going back to-night, my dear." And Deborah caught her father's arm. "Sit down, please—"
"I've heard enough!"
"I'm afraid you haven't," she replied.
"Very well." His smile was caustic. "Give me some more of it," he said.
"Her husband won't have her," said Deborah bluntly. "He told me so himself—to-night."
"Did, eh—then I'll talk to him!"
"He thinks," she went on in a desperate tone, "that Laura has been leading—'her own little life'—as he put it to me."
"Eh?"
"He is bringing suit himself."
"Oh! He is!" cried Roger hoarsely. "Then I will talk to this young man!" But she put out a restraining hand:
"Father! Don't try to fight this suit!"
"You watch me!" he snarled. Tears showed in her eyes:
"Think! Oh, please! Think what you're doing! Have you ever seen a divorce-court—here, in New York? Do you know what it's like? What it can be like?"
"Yes," Roger panted. He did know, and the picture came vividly into his mind—a mass of eager devouring eyes fixed on a girl in a witness chair. "To-morrow I see a lawyer!" he said.
"No—you won't do that, my dear," Deborah told him sadly. "Laura's husband has got proofs."
Her father looked up slowly and glared into his daughter's face.
"I've seen them myself," she added. "And Laura has admitted it, too."
Still for a moment he stared at her. Then slowly he settled back in his chair, his eyes dropped in their sockets, and very carefully, with a hand which was trembling visibly, he lifted his cigar to his lips. It had gone nearly out, but he drew on it hard until it began to glow again.
"Well," he asked simply, "what shall we do?"
Sharply Deborah turned away. To be quiet, to be matter of fact, to act as though nothing had happened at all—she knew this was what he wanted now, what he was silently begging her to be for his sake, for the family's sake. For he had been raised in New England. And so, when she turned back to him, her voice was flat and commonplace.
"Keep her here," she said. "Let him do what he likes. There'll be nothing noisy, he promised me that. But keep her here till it's over."
Roger smoked for a moment, and said,
"There's Edith and her children."
"The children needn't know anything—and Edith only part of it."
"The less, the better," he grunted.
"Of course." She looked at him anxiously. This tractable mood of his might not last. "Why not go up and see her now—and get it all over—so you can sleep."
Over Roger's set heavy visage flitted a smile of grim relish at that. Sleep! Deborah was funny. Resolutely he rose from his chair.
"You'll be careful, of course," she admonished him, and he nodded in reply. At the door he turned back:
"Where's the other chap?"
"I don't know," she answered. "Surely you don't want to see him—." Her father snorted his contempt:
"See him? No. Nor she neither. She's not to see him. Understand?"
"I wouldn't tell her that to-night."
"Look here." Roger eyed his daughter a moment.
"You've done well. I've no complaint. But don't try to manage everything."
He went out and slowly climbed the stairs. Outside the bedroom door he paused. When had he stood like this before? In a moment he remembered. One evening some two years ago, the night before Laura's wedding, when they had had that other talk. And so it had come to this, had it. Well, there was no use making a scene. Again, with a sigh of weariness, Laura's father knocked at her door.
"Come in, Deborah," she said.
"It isn't Deborah, it's I." There was a little silence.
"Very well, father, come in, please." Her voice sounded tired and lifeless. He opened the door and found the room dark. "I'm over on the bed," she said. "I've had a headache this evening."
He came over to the bedside and he could just see her there, a long shadow upon the white. She had not taken off her clothes. He stood a moment helplessly.
"Please don't you talk to me!" His daughter fiercely whispered. "I can't stand any more to-night!"
"I won't," he answered. "It's too late." Again there was a pause.
"What time is it?" she asked him. But he did not answer.
"Well, Laura," he said presently, "your sister has told me everything. She has seen your husband—it's all arranged—and you're to stay here till it's over ... You want to stay here, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Then it's settled," he went on. "There's only one thing—the other man. I don't know who he is and I don't want to know. And I don't want you to know him again. You're not to see him. Understand?" For a moment Laura was silent.
"I'm going to marry him, father," she said. And standing in the darkened room Roger stiffened sharply.
"Well," he answered, after a pause, "that's your affair. You're no longer a child. I wish you were," he added.
Suddenly in the darkness Laura's hand came out clutching for his. But he had already turned to the door.
"Good-night," he said, and left her.
In the hallway below he met Deborah, and to her questioning look he replied, "All right, I guess. Now I'm going to bed." He went into his room and closed the door.
As soon as Roger was alone, he knew this was the hardest part—to be here by himself in this intimate room, with this worn blue rug, these pictures and this old mahogany bed. For he had promised Judith his wife to keep close to the children. What would she think of him if she knew?
Judith had been a broad-minded woman, sensible, big-hearted. But she never would have stood for this. Once, he recollected, she had helped a girl friend to divorce her husband, a drunkard who ran after chorus girls. But that had been quite different. There the wife had been innocent and had done it for her children. Laura was guilty, she hadn't a child, she was already planning to marry again. And then what, he asked himself. "From bad to worse, very likely. A woman can't stop when she's started downhill." His eye was caught by the picture directly before him on the wall—the one his wife had given him—two herdsmen with their cattle high up on a shoulder of a sweeping mountain side, tiny blue figures against the dawn. It had been like a symbol of their lives, always beginning clean glorious days. What was Laura beginning?
"Well," he demanded angrily, as he began to jerk off his clothes, "what can I do about it? Try to keep her from re-marrying, eh? And suppose I succeeded, how long would it last? She wouldn't stay here and I couldn't keep her. She'll be independent now—her looks will be her bank account. There'd be some other chap in no time, and he might not even marry her!" He tugged ferociously at his boots. "No, let well enough alone!"
He finished undressing, opened the window, turned out the gas and got into bed. Wearily he closed his eyes. But after a time he opened them and stared long through the window up at the beetling cliff of a building close by, with its tier upon tier of lighted apartments, a huge garish hive of homes. Yes, the town was crowding down on him to-night, on his house and on his family. He realized it had never stopped, and that his three grown children, each one of them a part of himself, had been struggling with it all the time. Laura—wasn't she part of himself? Hadn't he, too, had his little fling, back in his early twenties? "You will live on in our children's lives." She was a part of him gone wild. She gave it free rein, took chances. God, what a chance she had taken this time! The picture of that court he had seen, with the girl in the witness chair and those many rows of eyes avidly fixed upon her, came back to his mind so vividly they seemed for a moment right here in the room, these eyes of the town boring into his house. Angrily he shut out the scene. And alone in the darkness, Roger said to his daughter all the ugly furious things he had not said to her upstairs—until at last he was weary of it.
"Why am I working myself all up? I've got to take this. It's my medicine."
CHAPTER XXXIII
But as he watched Laura in the house, Roger's first emotions were complicated more and more by a feeling of bewilderment. At dinner the next evening he noticed with astonishment that she appeared like her natural self. "She's acting," he decided. But this explanation he soon dismissed. No, it was something deeper. She was actually unashamed, unafraid. That first display of feelings, the night of her arrival, had been only the scare of an hour. Within a few days she was back on her feet; and her cure for her trouble, if trouble she felt, was not less but more pleasure, as always. She went out nearly every evening now; and when she had spent what money she had, she sold a part of her jewelry to the little old Galician Jew in the shop around the corner. Yes, she was her natural self. And she was as before to her father. Her attitude said plainly,
"It isn't fair to you, poor dear, to expect you to fully understand how right I am in this affair. And considering your point of view, you're acting very nicely."
Often as she talked to him a note of good-humored forgiveness crept into his daughter's voice. And looking at her grimly out of the corner of his eye, he saw that she looked down on him, far, far down from heights above.
"Yes," he thought, "this is modern." Then he grew angry all at once. "No," he added, "this is wrong! You can't fool me, young woman, you know it as well as I do myself! You're not going to carry this off with an air—not with your father! No, by George!"
And he would grow abrupt and stern. But days would pass and in spite of himself into their talks would creep a natural friendly tone. Again he found himself friends with her—friends as though nothing whatever had happened! Could it be that a woman who had so sinned could go right on? Here was Laura, serenely unconscious of guilt, and smiling into her future, dreaming still of happiness, quite plainly sure of it, in fact! With a curious dismayed relief Roger would scowl at this daughter of his—a radiant enigma in his quiet sober house.
But Edith was not at all perplexed. When she learned from Deborah that there was soon to be a divorce, she came at once to her father. Her face was like a thundercloud.
"A nice example for my children!" she indignantly exclaimed.
"I'm sorry, my dear. But what can I do?"
"You can make her go back to her husband, can't you?"
"No, I can't," he flatly replied.
"Then I'd better try it myself!"
"You'll do no such thing!" he retorted. "I've gone clear to the bottom of this—and I say you're to leave her alone!"
"Very well," she answered. And she did leave her sister alone, so severely that Laura soon avoided being home for lunch or dinner. She had taken the room which George had occupied ever since John had been turned out, and there she breakfasted late in bed, until Edith put a stop to it. They barely spoke to each other now. Laura still smiled defiance.
Days passed. Christmas came at last, and despite Edith's glum resolution to make it a happy time for the children, the happiness soon petered out. After the tree in the morning, the day hung heavy on the house. Roger buried himself in his study. Laura had motored off into the country with a gay party of her friends. Or was this just a ruse, he wondered, and was she spending the day with her lover? Well, what if she was? Could he lock her in?
About twilight he thought he heard her return, and later from his bedroom he heard her voice and Edith's. Both voices sounded angry, but he would not interfere.
At the Christmas dinner that evening Laura did not put in an appearance, but Edith sat stiff and silent there; and despite the obvious efforts which Deborah and Allan made to be genial with the children, the very air in the room was charged with the feeling of trouble close ahead. Again Roger retreated into his den, and presently Laura came to him.
"Good-night—I'm going out," she said, and she pressed her cheek lightly to his own. "What a dear you've been to me, dad," she murmured. And then she was gone.
A few minutes later Edith came in. She held a small note in her hand, which Roger saw was addressed to himself.
"Well, father, I learned this afternoon what you've been keeping from me," she said. Roger gave her a steady look.
"You did, eh—Laura told you?"
"Yes, she did!" his daughter exclaimed. "And I can't help wondering, father—"
"Why did she tell you? Have you been at her again to-day?"
"Again? Not at all," she answered. "I've done as you asked me to, let her alone. But to-day—mother's day—I got thinking of her."
"Leave your mother out of it, please. What did you say to Laura?"
"I tried to make her go back, of course—"
"And she told you—"
"He wouldn't have her! And then in a perfect tantrum she went on to tell me why!" Edith's eyes were cold with disgust. "And I'm wondering why you let her stay here—in the same house with my children!"
Roger reached out his hand.
"Give me that note," he commanded. He read it quickly and handed it back. The note was from Laura, a hasty good-bye.
"Edith will explain," she wrote, "and you will see I cannot stay any longer. It is simply too impossible. I am going to the man I love—and in a few days we shall sail for Naples. I know you will not interfere. It will make the divorce even simpler and everything easier all round. Please don't worry about me. We shall soon be married over there. You have been so dear and sensible and I do so love you for it." Then came her name scrawled hastily. And at the bottom of the page: "I have paid every bill I can think of."
Edith read it in silence, her color slowly mounting.
"All right," said her father, "your children are safe." She gave him a quick angry look, burst into tears and ran out of the room.
Roger sat without moving, his heavy face impassive. And so he remained for a long time. Well, Laura was gone—no mistake about that—and this time she was gone for good. She was going to live in Rome. Try to stop her? No. What good would it do? Wings of the Eagles, Rome reborn. That was it, she had hit it, struck the keynote of this new age. Rome reborn, all clean, old-fashioned Christian living swept away by millions of men at each others' throats like so many wolves. And at last quite openly to himself Roger admitted that he felt old. Old and beaten, out of date. Moments passed, and hours—he took little note of time. Nor did he see on the mantle the dark visage of "The Thinker" there, resting on the huge clinched fist and brooding down upon him. Lower, imperceptibly, he sank into his leather chair.
Quiet had returned to his house.
CHAPTER XXXIV
But the quiet was dark to Roger now. Each night he spent in his study alone, for instinctively he felt the need of being by himself for a while, of keeping away from his children—out of whose lives he divined that other events would soon come forth to use up the last of the strength that was in him.
And Roger grew angry with the world. Why couldn't it let a man alone, an old man in a silent house alive for him with memories? Repeatedly in such hours his mind would go groping backward into the years behind him. What a long and winding road, half buried in the jungle, dim, almost impenetrable, made up of millions of small events, small worries, plans and dazzling dreams, with which his days had all been filled. But the more he recalled the more certain he grew that he was right. Life had never been like this: the world had never come smashing into his house, his very family, with its dirty teeming tenements, its schools, its prisons, electric chairs, its feverish rush for money, its luxuries, its scandals. These things had existed in the world, but remote and never real, mere things which he had read about. War? Did he not remember wars that had come and gone in Europe? But they hadn't come into his home like this, first making him poor when he needed money for Edith and her children, then plunging Deborah into a struggle which might very probably ruin her life, and now taking Laura and filling her mind with thoughts of pagan living. Why was every man, woman and child, these days, bound up in the whole life of the world? What would come of it all? A new day out of this deafening night? Maybe so. But for him it would come too late.
"What have I left to live for?"
One night with a sigh he went to his desk, lit a cigar and laid his hand upon a pile of letters which had been mounting steadily. It was made up of Laura's bills, the ones she had not remembered. Send them after her to Rome for that Italian fellow to pay? No, it could not be thought of. Roger turned to his dwindling bank account. He was not yet making money, he was still losing a little each week. But he would not cut expenses. To the few who were left in his employ, to be turned away would mean dire need. And angrily he determined that they should not starve to pay Laura's bills. "The world for the strong, eh? Not in my office!" In Rome or Berlin or Vienna, all right! But not over here!
Grimly, when he had made out the checks, Roger eyed his balance. By spring he would be penniless. And he had no one to turn to now, no rich young son-in-law who could aid.
He set himself doggedly to the task of forcing up his business, and meanwhile in the evenings he tried with Edith to get back upon their former footing. To do this was not easy at first, for his bitterness still rankled deep: "When you were in trouble I took you in, but when she was in trouble you turned her out, as you turned out John before her." In the room again vacated, young George had been reinstalled. One night Edith found her father there looking in through the open doorway, and the look on his massive face was hard.
"Better have the room disinfected again," he muttered when he saw her. He turned and went slowly down the stairs. And she was late for dinner that night.
But Edith had her children. And as he watched her night by night hearing their lessons patiently, reading them fairy stories and holding them smilingly in her arms, the old appeal of her motherhood regained its hold upon him. One evening when the clock struck nine, putting down his paper he suggested gruffly,
"Well, daughter, how about some chess?"
Edith flushed a little:
"Why, yes, dear, I'd be glad to."
She rose and went to get the board. So the games were resumed, and part at least of their old affection came to life. But only a part. It could never be quite the same again.
And though he saw little of Deborah, slowly, almost unawares to them both, she assumed the old place she had had in his home—as the one who had been right here in the house through all the years since her mother had died, the one who had helped and never asked help, keeping her own troubles to herself. He fell back into his habit of going before dinner to his daughter's bedroom door to ask whether she would be home that night. At one such time, getting no response and thinking Deborah was not there, he opened the door part way to make sure. And he saw her at her dresser, staring at herself in the glass, rigid as though in a trance. Later in the dining room he heard her step upon the stairs. She came in quietly and sat down; and as soon as dinner was over, she said her good-nights and left the house. But when she came home at midnight, he was waiting up for her. He had foraged in the kitchen, and on his study table he had set out some supper. While she sat there eating, her father watched her from his chair.
"Things going badly in school?" he inquired.
"Yes," she replied. There was silence.
"What's wrong?"
"To-night we had a line of mothers reaching out into the street. They had come for food and coal—but we had to send most of them home empty-handed. Some of them cried—and one of them fainted. She's to have a baby soon."
"Can't you get any money uptown?" he asked.
"I have," she answered grimly. "I've been a beggar—heaven knows—on every friend I can think of. And I've kept a press agent hard at work trying to make the public see that Belgium is right here in New York." She stopped and went on with her supper. "But it's a bad time for work like mine," she continued presently. "If we're to keep it going we must above all keep it cheap. That's the keynote these days, keep everything cheap—at any cost—so that men can expensively kill one another." Her voice had a bitter ring to it. "You try to talk peace and they bowl you over, with facts on the need of preparedness—for the defence of your country. And that doesn't appeal to me very much. I want a bigger preparedness—for the defence of the whole world—for democracy, and human rights, no matter who the people are! I'd like to train every child to that!"
"What do you mean?" her father asked.
"To teach him what his life can be!" she replied in a hard quivering tone. "A fight? Oh yes! So long as he lives—and even with guns if it must be so! But a fight for all the people on earth!—and a world so full of happy lives that men will think hard—before ever again letting themselves be led by the nose—into war and death—for a place in the sun!" She rose from her chair, with a weary smile: "Here I am making a speech again. I've made so many lately it's become a habit. I'm tired out, dad, I'm going to bed." Her father looked at her anxiously.
"You're seeing things out of proportion," he said. "You've worked so hard you're getting stale. You ought to get out of it for a while."
"I can't!" she answered sharply. "You don't know—you don't even guess—how it takes every hour—all the demands!"
"Working," was her harsh reply. "Trying to keep his hospital going with half its staff. The woman who was backing him is giving her money to Belgium instead."
"Do you see much of him?"
"Every day. Let's drop it. Shall we?"
"All right, my dear—"
And they said good-night ...
In the meantime, in the house, Edith had tried to scrimp and save, but it was very difficult. Her children had so many needs, they were all growing up so fast. Each month brought fresh demands on her purse, and the fund from the sale of her belongings had been used up long ago. Her sole resource was the modest allowance her father gave her for running the house, and she had not asked him for more. She had put off trouble from month to month. But one evening early in March, when he gave her the regular monthly check, she said hesitatingly:
"I'm very sorry, father dear, but I'm afraid we'll need more money this month." He glanced up from his paper:
"What's the matter?" She gave him a forced little smile, and her father noticed the gray in her hair.
"Oh, nothing in particular. Goodness knows I've tried to keep down expenses, but—well, we're a pretty large household, you know—"
"Yes," said Roger kindly, "I know. Are the month's bills in?"
"Yes."
"Let me see them." She brought him the bills and he looked relieved. "Not so many," he ventured.
"No, but they're large."
"Why, look here, Edith," he said abruptly, "these are bills for two months—some for three, even four!"
"I know—that's just the trouble. I couldn't meet them at the time."
"Laura was here—and I didn't want to bother you—you had enough on your mind as it was. I've done the best I could, father dear—I've sold everything, you know—but I've about come to the end of my rope." And her manner said clearly, "I've done my part. I'm only a woman. I'll have to leave the rest to you."
"I see—I see." And Roger knitted his heavy brows. "I presume I can get it somehow." This would play the very devil with things!
"Father." Edith's voice was low. "Why don't you let Deborah help you? She does very little, it seems to me—compared to the size of her salary."
"She can't do any more than she's doing now," was his decisive answer. Edith looked at him, her color high. She hesitated, then burst out:
"I saw her check book the other day, she had left it on the table! She's spending thousands—every month!"
"That's not her own money," Roger said.
"No—it's money she gets for her fads—her work for those tenement children! She can get money enough for them!" He flung out his hand:
"Leave her out of this, please!"
"Very well, father, just as you say." And she sat there hurt and silent while again he looked slowly through the bills. He jotted down figures and added them up. They came to a bit over nine hundred dollars. Soon Deborah's key was heard in the door, and Roger scowled the deeper. She came into the room, but he did not look up. He heard her voice:
"What's the matter, Edith?"
"Bills for the house."
"Oh." And Deborah came to her father. "May I see what's the trouble, dear?"
"I'd rather you wouldn't. It's nothing," he growled. He wanted her to keep out of this.
"Why shouldn't she see?" Edith tartly inquired. "Deborah is living here—and before I came she ran the house. In her place I should certainly want to know."
Deborah was already glancing rapidly over the bills.
"Why, Edith," she exclaimed, "most of these bills go back for months. Why didn't you pay them when they were due?"
"Simply because I hadn't the money!"
"You've had the regular monthly amount."
"That didn't last long—"
"Why didn't you tell us?"
"Laura was here."
Deborah gave a shrug of impatience, and Roger saw how tired she was, her nerves on edge from her long day.
"Never mind about it now," he put in.
"What a pity," Deborah muttered. "If we had been told, we could have cut down."
"I don't agree with you!" Edith rejoined. "I have already done that myself! I've done nothing else!"
"Have the servants been paid?" her sister asked.
"No, they haven't-"
"Since when?"
"Three months!"
Roger got up and walked the room. Deborah tried to speak quietly:
"I can't quite see where the money has gone."
"Can't you? Then look at my check book." And Edith produced it with a glare. Her sister turned over a few of the stubs.
"What's this item?"
"Where?"
"Here. A hundred and twenty-two dollars."
"The dentist," Edith answered. "Not extravagant, is it—for five children?"
"I see," said Deborah. "And this?"
"Bedding," was Edith's sharp response. "A mattress and more blankets. I found there weren't half enough in the house."
"You burned John's, didn't you?"
"Naturally!"
All at once both grew ashamed.
"Let's be sensible," Deborah said. "We must do something, Edith—and we can't till we're certain where we stand."
"Very well—"
They went on more calmly and took up the items one by one. Deborah finished and was silent.
"Well, father, what's to be done?" she asked.
"I don't know," he answered shortly.
"Somehow or other," Deborah said, "we've got to cut our expenses down."
"I'm afraid that's impossible," Edith rejoined. "I've already cut as much as I can."
"So did I, in my school," said her sister. "And when I thought I had reached the end, I called in an expert. And he showed me ways of saving I had never dreamed of."
"What kind of expert would you advise here?" Edith's small lip curled in scorn.
"Domestic science, naturally—I have a woman who does nothing else. She shows women in their homes just how to make money count the most."
"What women? And what homes? Tenements?"
"Yes. She's one of my teachers."
"Thank you!" said Edith indignantly. "But I don't care to have my children brought down to tenement standards!"
"I didn't mean to have them! But I know she could show you a great many things you can buy for less!"
"I'm afraid I shouldn't agree with her!"
"Why not, Edith?"
"Because she knows only tenement children—nothing of children bred like mine!"
Deborah drew a quick short breath, her brows drew tight and she looked away. She bit her lip, controlled herself:
"Very well, I'll try again. This house is plenty large enough so that by a little crowding we could make room for somebody else. And I know a teacher in one of my schools who'd be only too glad—"
"Take a boarder, you mean?"
"Yes, I do! We've got to do something!"
"No!"
Deborah threw up her hands:
"All right, Edith, I'm through," she said. "Now what do you propose?"
"I can try to do without Hannah again—"
"That will be hard—on all of us. But I guess you'll have to."
"So it seems."
"But unfortunately that won't he enough."
Edith's face grew tenser:
"I'm afraid it will have to be—just now—I've had about all I can stand for one night!"
"I'm sorry," Deborah answered. For a moment they confronted each other. And Edith's look said to Deborah plainly, "You're spending thousands, thousands, on those tenement children! You can get money enough for them, but you won't raise a hand to help with mine!" And as plainly Deborah answered, "My children are starving, shivering, freezing! What do yours know about being poor?" Two mothers, each with a family, and each one baffled, brought to bay. There was something so insatiable in each angry mother's eyes.
"I think you'd better leave this to me," said Roger very huskily. And both his daughters turned with a start, as though in their bitter absorption they had forgotten his presence there. Both flushed, and now the glances of all three in that room avoided each other. For they felt how sordid it had been. Deborah turned to her sister.
"I'm sorry, Edith," she said again, and this time there were tears in her eyes.
"So am I," said Edith unsteadily, and in a moment she left the room. Deborah stood watching her father.
"I'm ashamed of myself," she said. "Well? Shall we talk it over?"
"No," he replied. "I can manage it somehow, Deborah, and I prefer that you leave it to me."
Roger went into his study and sank grimly into his chair. Yes, it had been pretty bad; it had been ugly, ominous. He took paper and pencil and set to work. How he had come to hate this job of wrestling with figures. Of the five thousand dollars borrowed in August he had barely a thousand left. The first semi-annual interest was due next week and must be paid. The balance would carry them through March and on well into April. By that time he hoped to be making money, for business was better every week. But what of this nine hundred dollars in debts? Half at least must be paid at once. Lower and lower he sank in his chair. But a few moments later, his blunt heavy visage cleared, and with a little sigh of relief he put away his papers, turned out the lights and went upstairs. The dark house felt friendly and comforting now.
In his room he opened the safe in the corner where his collection of curious rings had lain unnoticed for many months. He drew out a tray, sat down by the light and began to look them over. At first only small inanimate objects, gradually as from tray after tray they glittered duskily up at him, they began to yield their riches as they had so often done before. Spanish, French, Italian, Bohemian, Hungarian, Russian and Arabian, rings small and rings enormous, religious rings and magic rings, poison rings, some black with age for all his careful polishing—again they stole deep into Roger's imagination with suggestions of the many hands that had worn them through the centuries, of women kneeling in old churches, couples in dark crooked streets, adventures, love, hate, jealousy. Youth and fire, dreams and passion....
At last he remembered why he was here. He thought of possible purchasers. He knew so many dealers, but he knew, too, that the war had played the devil with them as with everyone else. Still, he thought of several who would find it hard to resist the temptation. He would see them to-morrow, one by one, and get them bidding, haggling. Roger frowned disgustedly.
No help for it, though, and it was a relief. It would bring a truce in his house for a time.
But the truce was brief.
On the afternoon when he sold his collection Roger came home all out of sorts. He had been forced to haggle long; it had been a mean inglorious day; one of the brightest paths in his life had ended in a pigstie. But at least he had bought some peace in his home! Women, women, women! He shut the front door with a slam and went up to his room for a little rest, a little of what he had paid for! On the stairs he passed young Betsy, and he startled the girl by the sudden glare of reproach he bestowed upon her. Savagely he told himself he was no "feminist" that night!
The brief talk he had with Edith was far from reassuring. With no Deborah there to wound her pride, Edith quickly showed herself friendly to her father; but when he advised her to keep her nurse, she at once refused to consider it.
"I want you to," he persisted, with an anxious note in his voice. He had tried life without Hannah here and he did not care to try it again.
"It is already settled, father, I sent her away this morning."
"Then you get her right back!" he exclaimed. But Edith's face grew obstinate.
"I don't care to give Deborah," she replied, "another chance to talk as she did."
Roger looked at her gloomily. "You will, though," he was thinking. "You two have only just begun. Let any little point arise, which a couple of men would settle offhand, and you two will get together and go it! There'll be no living in the house!"
With deepening displeasure he watched the struggle between them go on. Sometimes it seemed to Roger there was not a topic he could bring up which would not in some way bring on a clash. One night in desperation he proposed the theatre.
"I'm afraid we can't afford it," said Edith, glancing at Deborah. And she had the same answer, again and again, for the requests her children made, if they involved but the smallest expense. "No, dear, I'm afraid we can't afford that," she would say gently, with a sigh. And under this constant pressure, these nightly little thrusts and jabs, Deborah would grow rigid with annoyance and impatience.
"For Heaven's sake, Edith," she burst out, one night when the children had gone to their lessons, "can you think of nothing on earth, except your own little family?"
"Here it comes again," thought Roger, scowling into his paper. He heard Edith's curt reply:
"No, I can't, not nowadays. Nobody else seems to think of them."
"You mean that I don't!"
"Do you?"
"Yes! I'm thinking of George! Do you want him killed in the trenches—in a war with Germany or Japan?"
"Are you utterly mad?" demanded Edith.
"No, I'm awake—my eyes are open! But yours are shut so tight, my dear, you can't see what has happened! You know this war has made us poor and your own life harder, but that's all. The big thing it has done you know nothing about!"
"Suppose you teach me," Edith said, with a prim provoking little smile. Deborah turned on her angrily:
"It has shown that all such mothers as you are out of date and have got to change! That we're bound together—all over the world—whether we like it or whether we don't! And that if we want to keep out of war, we've got to do it by coming right out of our own little homes—and thinking, Edith, thinking!"
"Votes for women," Edith said. Deborah looked at her, rose with a shrug.
"All right, Edith, I give up."
"Thank you. I'm not worth it. You'd better go back to your office now and go on with your work of saving the world. And use every hour of your time and every dollar you possess. I'll stay here and look after my children."
Deborah had gone into the hall. Roger, buried deep in his paper, heard the heavy street door close. He looked up with a feverish sigh—and saw at the open door of his study George and Betsy standing, curious, solemn and wide eyed. How long had they been listening?