The Folletts came together every evening about six, chiefly by the
process known to American cities as commuting. Commuting brought them to
Number Eleven Indiana Avenue, Pemberton Heights. Seen from the New York
river-front, Pemberton Heights, on top of a great cliff on the New
Jersey side of the Hudson, suggests a battlemented parapet. By day, its
outline is a fringe against the sky; by night, its clustering lights are
like a constellation.
Indiana Avenue is one of those rare spots in the neighborhood of New
York where a measure of beauty is still reserved for the relatively
poor. The heights are too high for the railways to scale, too
inconvenient for factories. The not-very-well-to-do can find shelter
there, as the mediæval peoples of the Mediterranean coast found it in
the rock towns where the pirates couldn't follow them. It is hardly
conceivable that industry will ever climb to this uncomfortable perch,
or that much competition will put up rents. Too inaccessible for the
social rich, and too isolated for the still more social poor, Pemberton
Heights is the refuge of those who don't mind the trouble of getting
there for the sake of the compensation.
The compensation is largely in the way of air and panorama. Both have a
tendency to take away your breath. You would hardly believe that so much
of New York could be visible all at once. The gigantic profile of
Manhattan is sketched in here with a single stroke, while the river is
thronged like a busy street seen from the top of a tower. City smoke
rolls up and ocean mist rolls in while you are looking on. Sunrise,
moonrise; moonset, sunset; stars in the heaven and lights along the
darkened waterway, afford to the not-very-well-to-do, cooped up all day
in kitchens, offices, and factories, a morning and evening glimpse into
the ecstatic.
Number Eleven was somewhat withdrawn from all this toward the middle of
the plateau. Built at a period when an architect's ambition was chiefly
to do something singular, it had a great deal of sloping roof, with
windows where you would not expect them. Pemberton Heights being held up
bravely to rain and snow, the color of the house was a weatherbeaten
brown. Two hydrangea trees, shaped like open umbrellas, and covered now
with white blossoms fading to rose, stood one on each side of the front
door in the center of two tiny grassplots. There was a piazza, of
course, where most of the family leisure was passed, and in the yard
behind the house there stood a cherry tree. All up and down the street
for the length of about half a mile were similar little houses, each
with its piazza and its architectural oddity, homes of the
not-very-well-to-do, content with their relative poverty. Among
themselves they formed a society as distinct and as active as that of
Marillo Park, and out of it they got as much pleasure as the Sidebottoms
and Collinghams from their more exclusive forgatherings.
In this soil, the Folletts had taken root with the ease of
transplantation of the Anglo-Saxon race. Drawn to Pemberton Heights by
the presence there of other Canadians, Josiah had bought the little
house for seven thousand dollars. On this he had paid four, raising the
other three on a mortgage which it was his ruling desire to pay off. The
mild, tenacious optimism of his nature convinced him he should be able
to do this, in spite of the danger of being "fired" hanging over him for
two years. The fact that, though the months kept passing, that sword
didn't fall inspired the belief that it never would. He had grown so
sure of this that with regard to the warning issued by Collingham he had
never taken his wife into his confidence. For one thing, it was useless
to alarm her when it might be without cause, and for another....
But that was the secret tragedy of Josiah's life. He had not made good
the promise he gave when Lizzie Scarborough married him, and the falling
of the sword would be the final proof of it. It would mean that his
whole patient, painstaking life had fitted him for nothing better than
the scrap heap. That he should come to such an end he couldn't believe
possible. That after nearly fifty years of uncomplaining drudgery he
should be flung aside as useless to man in general and worse than
useless to his family was not, he argued, in keeping with the will of
God. It was to the will of God he trusted more than to the mercy of
Bradley Collingham, though he trusted to them both.
When he married Lizzie in the little town of Lisgar, Nova Scotia, he had
been a bank clerk. A bank clerk in Canada is a kind of young nobleman at
the beginning of what may be a striking career, after the manner of a
fledgling in diplomacy. The banking institutions being few and large,
the employees are moved from post to post, much like _attachés_ or army
officers. As moves bring promotion, the clerk becomes a teller and the
teller a cashier and the cashier a branch manager and the branch manager
a wealthy man in touch with world-wide issues. It was the kind of
progress Josiah expected when he married Lizzie Scarborough, the kind of
future they dreamed of and talked about, and which never came.
Josiah lacked something. You couldn't put your finger on the flaw in his
energy, but you knew it was there. He was moved about, of course, but
with little or no promotion. Other men got that, but he was ignored.
Harum-scarum young fellows whose ignorance of bookkeeping was a scandal
were lifted over his head, while he and Lizzie stared at each other in
perplexity.
Hardest of all for him was that, as years went by, Lizzie herself lost
belief in him. More tender with him for his failure, she nevertheless
saw that he was not the man she had supposed in the gay young days at
Lisgar, and he saw that she saw. She gave up the hope of promotion
before he did. The best to which they came to aspire was a "raise."
It was bitter for Lizzie because, as she was fond of saying to herself,
and now and then to the children, she had been born a lady. This was no
more than the truth. Whatever the meaning given to the word, Lizzie
fulfilled it, though her claims were more than moral ones. The
Scarboroughs had been great people in Massachusetts before the
Revolution. The old Scarborough mansion, still standing in Cambridge,
bears witness to the generous scale on which they lived. But they left
it as it stood, with its pictures, its silver, its furniture, its
stores, rather than break their tie with England. Scorned by the country
from which they fled, and ignored by that to which they remained true,
their history on Nova-Scotian soil was chiefly one of descent. A few of
them prospered; a few reached high positions in the adopted land, but
most of them lacked opportunity as well as the will to create it. True,
Lizzie's father was a clergyman; but her sisters married poorly, her
brothers dropped into any chance jobs that came their way, while she
herself got only such fulfillment of her dreams as she found at
Pemberton Heights. Even the move to New York which Josiah had made when
convinced that the Bank of the Maritime Provinces held no further hope
for him had not greatly prospered them. Five years of drifting between
one bank and another were followed by five steady years with Collingham
& Law; but even that peaceful time was now at an end.
While the Collinghams were drinking tea on the flagged terrace, and
Jennie was on the ferryboat, and Teddy dressing and skylarking after his
plunge at the gym, and Follett nearing home, Lizzie was on her knees
pinning up the draperies she was "making over" for Gussie. Pansy, the
daughter of a bulldog and a Boston terrier, whose pansy-face had in it a
more than human yearning, stood looking on, with forelegs wide apart.
Gussie was fifteen, pretty, pert, and impatient.
"Everyone'll see that it's the old thing you've been wearing since I
dunno when."
Accustomed to this plaint, Lizzie thought it useless to reply.
"I'd rather not have a rag to wear than a thing everyone's sick of the
sight of. Momma, why can't I have a new dress, right out and out?"
"My darling, you'll have a new dress when your father gets his raise. It
must come before long; but I can't possibly give it you till then."
"I wish you'd stop talking," came from Gladys, who was busy with her
lessons in a corner. "How can I study with all this row going on? Momma,
what's the meaning of 'coagulation'?"
Coagulation explained, the fitting finished, and a dispute adjusted
between the two children, Lizzie began to spread the table for supper,
Gussie helping her. Most of the downstairs portion of the house being
thrown into one large living room, the dining table stood at the end
nearest the kitchen and pantry. It was a pleasure to watch the supple
movements of Gussie's figure, and the flittings of her slim-wristed
hands as she took the plates and laid them in their places. Most people
said she would one day be prettier than Jennie, but as yet that was only
promise.
Quite apparent was the fact that the mother had been more beautiful than
any of her daughters was ever likely to become. At fifty-odd, it was a
beauty that still had youth in it. Worn with the duties of providing for
a husband and four children, it retained a quality proud and aloof. In
her scouring and cooking and endless domestic round, Lizzie was like an
actress dressed and made up for a humble part rather than really living
it. The Scarborough tradition, which had first refused to bend to king
against people and again to yield to people against king, had survived
in this woman fighting for her inner life against failure, poverty, and
sordidness.
She was singing at her work when the front door opened and Josiah came
in. He stood for a minute in the little entry, surveying the living-room
absently, while Pansy pranced about his feet. Gladys was still at her
lessons, Gussie laying out the knives and forks.
"Where's your mother?"
Gladys jumped up and ran to him. She was his youngest, his darling, just
over twelve. He had always hoped to do better by her than by the older
ones.
"Hello, daddy!" With her arms round his neck, she was pulling his face
down to hers.
"Where's your mother?" he asked of Gussie, having advanced into the
room.
Gussie looked up from her task to inform him that her mother was in the
kitchen, but, seeing his gray face and shambling gait, she paused with a
fork in her hand.
"You're all right, daddy, aren't you?"
The sound of voices having called Lizzie from her work, she stood on the
threshold of the pantry, drying her hands on the corner of her apron.
Before he said a word she knew that the calamity which forever threatens
those dependent on a weekly wage had fallen on the family.
"Lizzie, I'm fired."
She had never had to take a blow like this, not even when the three who
came before Jennie had died in babyhood. This was the worst and hardest
thing her imagination could conjure up, because it meant not only the
sweeping away of their meager income, but her husband's defeat as a man.
Going to him, she laid her hands on his shoulders and tried to look into
the eyes that avoided hers in shame.
"We'll meet it, Jo," she said, quietly. "We've been through other
things. I've saved a little money ahead--nearly a hundred dollars. Don't
feel badly. I'm glad you're out of Collingham & Law's, where you've said
yourself that your desk was in a draught. You'll get another job, with
bigger pay, and perhaps"--she sprang to the great glorious hope she was
always cherishing--"and perhaps Teddy will earn more money and be a
great success."
"_Hel_-lo, ma!"
Teddy himself was swinging down the room, Pansy capering round him with
her silvery bark. Having tossed his cap on the sofa, he caught his
mother in a bearish hug. Fresh from his bath, gleaming, ruddy,
clear-eyed, stocky rather than short, he was a Herculean cub, the
makings of a man, but as yet with no soul beyond play. No one had ever
seen him serious. It was a drawback to him at Collingham & Law's, where
he skylarked his way through everything. "You must knock the
song-and-dance out of that young blood," was Mr. Bickley's report on
him, "or he'll never earn his pay."
Before his mother could say anything he was tickling her under the chin
with little "clks!" of the tongue, Pansy assisting by springing halfway
to his shoulder. The sport ended, he held her out at his strong arm's
length, laughing down into her eyes.
"Good old ma!--the best ever! What have you got for supper?"
She told him, as nearly as possible as if nothing else was on her mind.
Then she added:
"You've got to know, Teddy darling. They've discharged your father from
Collingham & Law's."
Confusedly, Teddy Follett knew he had received a summons, the call to be
a man. Hitherto he had been a boy; he had thought himself a boy; he had
called himself a boy. Even in the navy he had been with boys who were
treated as boys. The pang of agony he felt now was that he was a boy
still--with a man's part to play.
He did his best to play it on the instant.
"Oh, is he? Then that's all right. I'll be making more money soon and be
able to swing the whole thing."
Gussie was here the discordant element.
"You've got to make it pretty quick, then, and be smarter than you've
ever been before."
He turned away from the group in which his mother watched him with
adoring eyes while his father stood with gaze cast down like a criminal.
"I'm sorry to put the burden on you at your age, my boy," he said,
brokenly, "but perhaps I may get another job, after all, and one that'll
pay better."
Teddy didn't hear this, not that he was so far away, but because he was
listening to that call which seemed so impossible to respond to. He
would _have_ to be a man; he would _have_ to earn big money, and at
present he didn't see how. Fifty bucks a week, he was saying to himself,
was hardly enough to run the family, and he had only eighteen!
He was standing with his back to them all, his hands in his pockets,
when the front door opened again. Jennie came in all aglow and abloom
after her walk from the street cars.
"Well, what's the pose?" she asked, briskly, of Teddy, beginning to take
off her jacket. "You ought to be model to a sculptor."
"Jen," he whispered, hoarsely, before she could join the others, "pa's
fired."
To take this information in, Jennie paused with her arms still
outstretched in the act of taking off her jacket.
"Do you mean they don't want him any more at Collingham & Law's?"
"That's the right number."
"But--but what are we going to do?"
"That's for you and me to say. It's up to us, Jen. Pa'll never get
another job, not on your life, unless it's running a lift. We've got to
shoulder it--you and me between us."
Jennie passed on into the room and down to the group round the table.
The glow had gone out of her cheeks, but she was free from her brother's
dismay. To begin with, she was a woman, and he was only a man. All his
adventures would have to be dull ones in the line of work whereas
hers.... She could hear Wray saying, as he had said only two hours ago,
"You could marry Bob Collingham if you wanted to."
She didn't want to--as far as that went; but if the worst were to come
to the worst and they should be in need of bread....
"Hello, mother! Hello, daddy!" Jennie was quite self-possessed. "Teddy's
been telling me. Too bad, isn't 't? But something will turn up. What is
there for supper, Gus?"
Gussie minced round the table, putting on the salt cellars.
"There's pickled humming birds for princesses," she said, witheringly.
"After that there'll be honey-dew jam."
"Then I'll go up and take my hat off."
This coolness had the inspiriting effect of an officer's calm on a
sinking ship. It was an indication that life could go on as usual; and
if life could go on as usual, all wasn't lost.
"And for mercy's sake," Jennie added, turning to leave them, "don't
everybody look so glum. Why, if you knew what I could tell you you'd all
be ordering champagne."
So they were tided over the dreadful minute, which meant that they found
power to go on with the preparations for supper and to sit down to
supper itself. There the old man cheered up sufficiently to be able to
tell what had passed between him and the head of the firm. He was still
doing this when Teddy sprang to his feet, striking the table with a blow
that made the dishes jump.
"God damn Bradley Collingham!" he cried, with his mouth full. "I'll do
something to get even with him yet--if I have to go to the chair for
it."
"Sit down, you great gump--talking like that!" Gussie pulled her brother
by the coat till he sank back into his seat. "Momma, you should send him
away from the table."
"That's a very wicked thing to say, my boy--" Josiah was beginning.
"Let him talk as he likes," the mother broke in, calmly. "Going to the
chair can't be so terrible--if you have a reason."
She went on carving as if she had said nothing strange.
"Well, ma, I call that the limit," Jennie commented.
"Oh no, it isn't," the mother returned, with the new strength which
seemed to have come to her within half an hour. "I'm ready to say a good
deal more."
She looked adoringly toward Teddy, who after his outburst had returned
sheepishly to his plate, while Pansy stood apart from them all, wise,
yearning, and yet implacable, a little doggy Fate.