A WOMAN AT LAST
Even if Joel's command of English had enabled him to express himself
freely regarding his sister's latest acquisition, the opportunity was
not immediately forthcoming. The demonstrations of five excited
children, introduced into an environment entirely unfamiliar, proved
absorbing to all the household. With the exception of the baby who
clung shyly to Persis, refusing to leave her side, the new
reinforcements to the Dale family at once organized exploring
expeditions about the premises. Little feet clattered on the stairs
and shrilly sweet voices announced discoveries from garret to cellar.
Joel, who had improved the first opportunity to withdraw to his own
room, pushed the heaviest chair against the door in lieu of a key and
sat in the chair. And though his knob rattled a number of times, the
investigations of the juvenile explorers ceased at his threshold.
When the summons of the supper-bell sounded through the house, Joel was
uncertain whether to indicate his displeasure by remaining in his room
or to present himself as usual, allowing Persis to see with her own
eyes the condition to which her selfishness had reduced him. He
decided on the latter course, not so much as a concession to his
appetite as because he feared that in Persis' present absorption, his
absence would hardly be noticed. Wearing the expression becoming one
stricken by the hand of a friend, he left his room and faced the
invaders below.
The dining-room table had been extended to a length which carried his
thoughts back to his childhood. The baby, a frail-looking child,
between two and three, had not yet attained the dignity of a place at
the table but sat in a high-chair at Persis' left and drummed with her
spoon upon the adjustable shelf which served the double purpose of
keeping her in place and supporting her bowl of bread and milk. The
renaissance of the high-chair was responsible for a curious surge of
emotion through Joel's consciousness. Persis herself had once occupied
that chair and for a moment his sister's matronly figure at the head of
the table was singularly suggestive of his mother. He dropped into his
place with a hollow groan.
"Has he got a stomach ache?" inquired five-year-old Celia from the
other end of the table. The echoing whisper was distinctly audible.
Betty, ten years old, pink, prim and pretty, blushed reproachfully at
her new foster sister, while Mary, who was just bringing in the milk
toast, was agitated by a tremor which imperiled the family supper.
"Sh!" Persis temporarily subdued the outbreaking of her new
responsibilities by a lift of the eyebrows, and began to serve the milk
toast with lavish hand. Joel waved away the plate Mary brought him.
"I can't eat that truck. Truth is I haven't got a mite of appetite,
but just to keep up my strength I'll take a soft-boiled egg. I've got
to have something sustaining."
"Two eggs, Mary," said Persis to her hand-maid. "And give 'em just two
minutes and a half." The order failed to attract the attention of
Celia, absorbed at the moment in allaying the pangs of appetite. It
was not till the eggs were brought in and placed by Joel's plate that
the irrepressible infant was roused to the realization of the enormity
of the situation. She dropped her fork with a clatter.
"Oh, Aunt Persis, see what they've gone and done."
"What is it, child?"
"You said that little chickies came out of eggs." There was no further
pretense of whispering on Celia's part. Her voice rose in a tragic
wail. "And now he's going to eat up those eggs, and I wanted to save
'em to make chickies of. Oh, dear, dear!"
"'Tain't the right time of year for chickens, dearie," Persis explained
soothingly. "We'll have plenty next spring." But Joel glanced at the
objects which had called out Celia's protest with an air of extreme
distaste.
"It's enough to take away a hearty man's appetite," he complained. "I
guess if my victuals are going to be grudged me, I'd better eat
up-stairs."
"Don't gobble, Malcolm," said Persis, ignoring her brother's burst of
ill temper and addressing the little lad on her right. "And tuck your
napkin under your chin so you won't get anything on your blouse."
At this point the tactful Betty created a diversion by inquiring, "When
shall we start going to school, Aunt Persis? Monday?"
"Looks to me as if to-morrow'd be the best day. It's my idea that if a
thing's worth starting at all, you can't start too soon. Some folks
save up their good resolutions for the first of the year, but it's a
better way to begin right off as soon as you think of it. And then
when the New Year comes, you're just that much ahead."
"I'm going to study awful hard," declared Algie, with an air of putting
this good counsel to immediate application.
"Well, I'm not," announced Malcolm with equal decision. And then as
Betty emitted a protesting and shocked murmur, he explained: "Of course
I'll study some, but I've got to save the most of my strength for
playing football when I'm big."
Joel pushed back his chair and took his egg cup from the table.
"I guess I'll go to my room, Persis," he said in a hollow voice.
"Maybe up-stairs where it's quiet, I'll be able to eat a little. And
to-morrow you'd better have Mary make me some beef tea. I've got to
have something to keep up my strength." Slowly and solemnly he mounted
the stairs, convinced by the increased animation of the voices in the
room below that his departure had not cast an irreparable gloom over
the cheerful spirits of the diners.
This time he did not feel it necessary to barricade the door. Indeed
he left it a trifle ajar, and so was party to the cheerful confusion of
getting the children to bed. The baby--Amaryllis was her impossible
name, though she looked too fragile to sustain its weight--was to share
Persis' quarters. The two older girls occupied the chamber adjoining.
The two boys had been assigned to a snug little room on the other side
of the hall.
"Close by me so I can hear every mite of their rowdy-dow," Joel thought
with bitterness. But in spite of himself he listened. The children
were calling to one another across the hall. Apparently their previous
acquaintance had been slight, and in addition to the excitement of
finding themselves in a new environment, they were experiencing the
more intoxicating novelty of becoming acquainted all at once with a
fair-sized contingent of brothers and sisters.
"'Most ready for bed, children?" Persis' voice sounded rich and deep,
contrasting with the piping chatter. "Time you was asleep, for
to-morrow's a school day. And you've got to say your prayers yet."
"I said mine on the train coming down," explained Malcolm with his
quaint drawl. "Thought I might as well save the time as long as there
wasn't anything else to do."
"I've got a new prayer to say," announced Celia, flashing into the
hall, a diminutive apparition, white-clad, with twinkling pink feet.
"It's this way:
"'Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.'"
"I think I can teach you a nicer prayer than that," Persis said
serenely, while the older children laughed with the vast superiority of
their wider knowledge. Joel uttered an exclamation of horror.
"Children are natural blasphemers. Persis ought to take that little
limb [Transcriber's note: lamb?] in hand. If she don't know the
difference between Mother Goose and praying, she ought to be taught
quick. Old Doctor Watts was in the right of it.
"'Lord, we are vile, conceived in sin,
And born unholy and unclean.'"
The murmur of conversation in the adjoining rooms died away. Once or
twice after quiet descended, a little voice spoke out like the chirp of
a drowsy bird, brooded over by mother wings. Persis went softly down
the stairs. Joel waited long enough to make his advent impressive and
followed her.
She sat as he had seldom seen her, thrown back in the roomy recesses of
the big easy chair, her hands lying loosely in her lap. Her attitude
suggested the relaxation following fatigue. Her eyes were half closed,
her lips smiling. An indefinable rapture radiated from her. All her
life Persis Dale had been a resolutely cheerful person. But that
consistent, conscientious optimism was as unlike her present lightness
of heart as the heat of a coal fire, carefully fed and tended, differs
from the gracious warmth of June.
Singularly enough the sight of her satisfaction stirred her brother to
instant indignation. Up to this moment a sense of grievance had been
upper-most. Now he found himself shaken by hot anger. The instinct of
the male to dominate, outlasting the strength which sustains and
protects, spurred him on to have his way with her, to master this
madness which threatened the peace of his life.
"Persis," he began in a loud angry voice, "what's the meaning of this
piece of tom-foolishness?"
She opened her eyes and looked at him. After her two weeks' absence,
their longest separation in twenty years, she saw him almost as a
stranger would have done, a slight, undersized man with a bulging
forehead which told of nature's generous endowments, and the weak chin,
explaining his failure to measure up to the promise of his youth. His
disheveled hair and burning eyes gave an unprepossessing touch to the
picture. But the maternal feeling, always uppermost where her brother
was concerned, had been intensified by the children's advent. Persis
felt for the moment the indulgent disapproval of a mother toward an
unreasonable child.
"Why, Joel!" Her voice, with its new depth and richness, caressed the
name it uttered. "What's foolish about it?"
The gentleness of her answer misled him. He felt a sudden thrilling
conviction of his ability to bring her to terms.
"What's foolish about it? What ain't foolish, you'd better say. Looks
to me as if you'd taken leave of your senses. Filling up the house
with pauper brats."
The blood went out of her face. The smile lingered, but it had become
merely a muscular contraction, like the smile on dead lips. The soul
had left it.
"Yes," she said steadily. "It's true they're poor. But it's not for
you to fling that in their faces. A man who's lived on his sister's
earnings for twenty years."
He was dumb for a moment, wincing under the taunt but lacking words to
answer. He was not without reasonable qualities, and reason told him
he had taken the wrong track. The change in his voice when he spoke
again would have seemed ludicrous had she been in a mood to be amused.
"See here, Persis, you've got a chance now to take things easy. You've
worked hard," he admitted patronizingly, "and you've earned a right to
enjoy the rest of your life. Now, see how silly 'twould be to saddle
yourself with looking after a pack of children. It's no joke, I can
tell you; bringing up five young ones, nursing 'em through measles and
whooping-cough and the Lord knows what, and never being sure whether
they'll turn out good or bad. Maybe you think I'm prejudiced, but I'll
bet you anything you like that at this minute half Clematis is
wondering whether you're clean crazy or what."
Under his conciliatory address her first anger had cooled. A little
half-contemptuous smile curled her lips.
"It's a funny thing, Joel, you've known me for quite a
spell--thirty-seven years, the sixth of October--and you haven't found
out yet that I'm not looking for an easy time. My idea of Heaven ain't
a place where you can sit down and fold your hands."
"I s'pose you'd rather stick at home and fuss over other folks'
children than travel. You used to be crazy about foreign places,
Roosia and Italy and Egypt." Joel's eyes kindled with an unholy light
as he repeated the magic names. A bystander might have been reminded
of another tempter showing the kingdoms of the earth as a lure.
"Time enough to travel," Persis said laconically, "when my family is
raised."
"Giving up all the peace of your home, all the quiet--"
"Stillness isn't peace, Joel. There's quiet enough in the grave, if
that's what you're after. I don't want the hush of the tomb around
here. I want little feet tripping up and down and little voices
calling. Seems to me as if this old house had come alive since I
brought these children into it. And I've come alive myself. It's what
I always wanted, a family of children. I gave it up like I've given up
so many things, but I've got it at last, thank God."
"Persis," Joel remonstrated in shocked accents, "it's not becoming for
a single woman to say things like that. Wanting children, indeed. If
you weren't my sister I shouldn't know what to make of such talk."
She leaned toward him, her hands on her knees. Her gray eyes, warmed
almost to blue by joy and tenderness, were steely as she faced him.
"Joel, you don't take it into account that the Almighty didn't make old
maids. He made us just women, and the hunger for children is nothing
more to be ashamed of than the longing for food and drink. I'm not
accusing Him either, when I say that life isn't fair to a lot of us.
It hangs other people's burdens on our backs, and they weigh us down
till we haven't the strength to take what is rightfully ours. These
children had ought to be mine. My blood ought to be in their veins.
It's too late for that, but it's not too late for everything. What
would Aunt Persis Ann's money be worth to me if all it meant was that I
could fix up the house and leave off making dresses for other folks and
travel around and see the world? It's done more than that. It's made
up to me for being cheated out of my rights. It's made me a woman at
last."
Up-stairs sounded a fretful wail, a sharp little note, piercing the
quiet evening with its suggestion of discomfort or alarm. In an
instant Persis was on her feet. Again her face was luminous. Suffused
with a transforming tenderness, it lost its stern lines and became
radiantly youthful. Blue misty shadows veiled the steely light of her
eyes.
"The baby's crying," she said, and left him swiftly. And Joel, with a
bewildered sense of enlightenment carried to the point of dazzling
effulgence, clapped both hands over his throbbing head.
"Well," he gasped, "I'll be jiggered! Looks like you can live in the
same house with a woman from the time she's born till she's gray-headed
and not know her any better than if you'd met her once at a
Sunday-school picnic. To think of Persis with all those feelings
bottled up inside her for the last twenty years. As the immortal
Shakespeare says,
"'Who is't can read a woman?'"