his needs in the midst of her own fatigue; she had brought a warm
coverlet to throw over him. She lowered the shades and went softly out
again, taking with her every atom of the peace that he had begun to
wrest from a torturing universe.
The younger children talked in the hall; he heard them say,
“Don’t wake father. Hush! Don’t talk so _loud_.”
Then Loulou screamed, and some one came and took them away forcibly.
Ellen, the waitress, knocked at the door to say that the man had come
for the gas bill, and would he pay it? And Miss Candy came afterwards
professionally with a cup of hot broth, which she thought he had better
drink.
Then Mr. Nichols rose up and took a bath and shaved and went down town.
That day was long remembered in the rooms of the Electrographic Company.
Worried heads of departments consulted together; scared clerks went
hurrying hither and thither; mistakes were routed out, abuses which had
the sanction of custom sternly reformed, lapses from punctuality
clinched by new and stringent rules. There was a large arrearage of his
own affairs to be attended to, by which he had lost money.
The intellect of Mr. Nichols revolted fiercely against the sentiment to
which it had been subjugated; he saw every fact at last stripped bare.
As the afternoon waned and the rush of business was over, Mr. Nichols
leaned forward over his desk and tried to make up his mind to get up and
go home. He was weary. That blessed assurance that he had longed for so
unutterably yesterday was his, yet it seemed no longer a new bliss, but
a fact that he had always known. The pendulum had been set swinging so
hard toward the extreme of grief that it could not at once reverse its
motion and swing toward happiness. He felt indescribably worn,
indescribably old. There are times in all lives that are safely passed
through, but take something out of one which no after-delight can put
back again; some of those delicate sinews are broken which make the
unthinking strength of youth. In his sickness of soul Mr. Nichols sought
mechanically for some bright ray in the gray around him—something to
bring back his accustomed pleasure in living. Quintilia’s recovery—his
wife—children—friends—success—even dinner—all were but words.
In this gloom of effort he half drowsed off; some fleeting wave of a
dream showed a spot of light before him; it grew larger and larger, and
with it a figure grew also, until it was plainly revealed—the figure of
the sixth child, a lovely rounded thing with starry eyes and thistledown
curls, dimpling and laughing and thrusting a delicious little pink foot
in his bearded face. He could hear the baby voice crying,
“Pa-pa, kiss a footie. Kiss a footie, pa-pa!”
A foolish smile overspread the countenance of the president of the
Electrographic Company. In the rapture of love he forgot that he had
been disloyal even for a moment to this Sovereign Joy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Happiest Time
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Happiest Time
“AREN’T you coming to church with me this morning?”
“Well—not _this_ morning, I think, petty.”
“You _said_ you would.”
“Yes, I know I did, but I have a slight cold. I don’t think it would be
best for me, really, petty. I’ve been working pretty hard this week.”
Mr. Belmore carefully deposited a pile of newspapers beside his armchair
upon the floor of the little library, removing and opening the top layer
for perusal as he spoke, his eyes already glued to the headlines. “A
quiet day will do me lots of good. I’ll tell you what it is: I’ll
promise to go with you next Sunday, if you say so.”
“You always promise you’ll go next Sunday.” Mrs. Belmore, a
brown-haired, clear-eyed young woman in a blue and white spotted morning
gown, looked doubtfully, yet with manifest yielding, at her husband. Mr.
Belmore presented the radiantly clean and peaceful aspect of the man who
has risen at nine o’clock instead of the customary seven, and bathed and
dressed in the sweet unhurried calm that belongs only to the first day
of the week, poking dilatorily among chiffonier drawers, discovering
hitherto forgotten garments in his closet, and leisurely fumbling over a
change of shirt-studs before coming down to consume the breakfast kept
waiting for him.
“Of course I know it’s your only day at home—” Mrs. Belmore reverted to
her occupation of deftly setting the chairs in their rightful places,
and straightening the books on the tables. “I suppose I _ought_ to
insist on your going—when you promised—but still—” She gave a sigh of
relinquishment. “I suppose you _do_ need the rest,” she added. “We can
have a nice afternoon together, anyway. You can finish reading that
story aloud, and we’ll go out and take a good look at the garden. I
think the beans were planted too close under the pear tree last
year—that was the reason they didn’t come up right. Edith Barnes and
Alan Wilson are coming out from town after dinner for the rest of the
day, but that won’t make any difference to us.”
“_What?_”
“Now Herbert, how could I help asking them? You know the boarding house
she and her mother live in. Edith never gets a chance to see him alone.
They’re saving up now to get married—they’ve been engaged a year—so he
can’t spend any more money for theaters and things, and they just have
to walk and walk the streets, unless they go visiting, and they’ve been
almost everywhere, Edith says. She wrote and asked me to have them for
this Sunday; he’s been away for a whole week somewhere up in the State.
I think it’s pathetic.” In the warmth of explanation Mrs. Belmore had
unwittingly removed the pile of newspapers from the floor to an ottoman
at the further end of the room. “Edith says she knows it’s the happiest
time of their lives, and she does want to get some of the benefit of it,
poor girl.”
“What do they want to be engaged for, anyway?”
“_Herbert!_ How ridiculous! You are the most unreasonable man at times
for a sensible one that I ever laid my eyes on. Why did _we_ want to be
engaged?”
“That was different.” Mr. Belmore’s tone conveyed a permanent
satisfaction with his own case. “If every woman were like you, petty—I
never _could_ stand Edith, she’s one of your clever girls; there’s
something about her that always sets my teeth on edge. As for Wilson—oh,
Wilson’s just a usual kind of a fool, like myself. Hello, where are my
newspapers—and what in thunder makes it so cold? You don’t mean to say
you’ve got the window open?”
Mrs. Belmore had a habit of airing the rooms in the morning, which her
husband approved of theoretically, and combated intensely in practice.
After the window was banged shut she could hear him rattling at the
furnace below to turn on an extra flow of heat before settling down once
more in comfort. Although the April sun was bright, there was still a
chill in the air.
She looked in upon him, gowned and bonneted for church, sweet and placid
of mien, followed by two little girls, brave in their Sunday best, all
big hats and ribboned hair, and little starchy ruffles showing below
their brown coats. Mrs. Belmore stooped over her husband’s chair to kiss
him good-by.
“You won’t have to talk to Edith and Alan at all,” she said as if
continuing the conversation from where they had left off. “All we have
to do is to let them have the parlor or the library. They’ll entertain
each other.”
“Oh, don’t you bother about that. Now go ahead or you’ll be late, and
don’t forget to say your prayers for me, too. That’s right, always go to
church with your mother, girlies.”
“I _wish_ you were going, too.” Mrs. Belmore looked at her husband
lingeringly.
“I wish I were, petty,” said Mr. Belmore with a prompt mendacity so
evidently inspired by affection that his wife condoned it at once.
She thought of him more than once during the service with generous
satisfaction in his comfortable morning. She wished she had thought it
right to remain at home, too, as she did sometimes, but there were the
children to be considered. But she and Herbert would have the afternoon
together, and take part of it to see about planting the garden, a plot
twenty feet square in the rear of the suburban villa.
The Sunday visit to the garden was almost a sacrament. They might look
at it on other days, but it was only on Sunday, beginning with the early
spring, that husband and wife strolled around the little patch together,
first planning where to start the summer crop of vegetables and
afterwards watching the green things poking their spikes up through the
mold, and growing, growing. He did the planting and working in the long
light evenings after he came home, while she held the papers of seeds
for him, but it was only on Sunday that he could really watch the green
things grow, and learn to know each separate leaf intimately, and count
the blossoms on the beans and the cucumbers. From the pure pleasure of
the first radish, through all the various wiltings and shrivelings
incident to amateur gardening in summer deluge and drought, to the
triumphant survival of tomato plants and cucumber vines, running riot
over everything in the fall of the year, the little garden played its
old part as paradise to these two, who became more fully one in the
watching of the miracle of growth. When they gathered the pears from the
little tree in the corner of the plot, before the frost, and picked the
few little green tomatoes that remained on the dwindling stems, it was
like garnering a store of peaceful happiness. Every stage of the garden
was a romance. Mrs. Belmore could go to church without her husband, but
to have him survey the garden without her would have been the touch
beyond.
It must be horrid, anyway, she thought, to have to go every morning into
town in those smoky cars and crowded ferry-boats; just to run into town
twice a week tired her out. Now he would have finished the paper—now
little Dorothy would have come in, red cheeked from her walk, to kiss
daddy before her nap—now he must be pottering around among his
possessions and looking out for her. She knew so well how he would look
when he came to the door to meet her. The sudden sight of either one to
the other always shed a reflected light, like the glow of the sun. It
was with a feeling of wonder that she marked its disappearance, after a
brief gleam, as he not only opened the door, but came out on the piazza
to greet her, and closed it behind him.
“They’re in there—Edith and Alan.” He pointed over his shoulder with his
thumb. “I thought they weren’t coming until after dinner.”
“Why, they weren’t.”
“Well, they’re in the parlor, just the same. Came out over an hour ago.
Great Scott, I wished I’d gone with you. I’m worn out.”
“You don’t mean to say you’ve stayed with them all the time!” Mrs.
Belmore looked scandalized.
“I should say I had; I couldn’t lose ’em. Whichever room I went to they
followed; at least, she did, and he came after. I went from pillar to
post, I give you my word, petty, but Edith had me by the neck; she never
let go her grip for an instant. They won’t speak to each other, you see,
only to me. I haven’t had a chance to even finish the paper. I’ve had
the deuce of a time! I don’t know what you are going to do about it.”
“Never mind, it will be all right now,” said Mrs. Belmore reassuringly.
She pushed past him into the parlor where sat a tall, straight girl with
straight, light brows, a long straight nose, and a straight mouth with a
droop at the corners. In the room beyond, a thick set, dark young man
with glasses and a nervous expression was looking at pictures. It did
not require a Solomon to discover at a glance how the land lay.
If Mrs. Belmore had counted easily on her powers of conciliation she was
disappointed this time. After the dinner, whereat the conversation was
dragged laboriously around four sides of a square, except when the two
little girls made some slight diversion, and the several futile attempts
when the meal was over to leave the lovers alone together, Mrs. Belmore
resigned herself, perforce, to the loss of her cherished afternoon.
“It’s no use, we’ll have to give up the reading,” she said to her
husband rapidly, in one of her comings and goings. “Perhaps later, dear.
But it’s really dreadful, here we’ve been talking of religion and
beet-root sugar and smallpox, when anyone can see that her heart is
breaking.”
“I think he is getting the worst of it,” said Mr. Belmore impartially.
“Oh, it won’t hurt _him_.”
“Well, you’ve given them plenty of opportunities to make up.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t know how.”
She added in a louder tone, “You take Mr. Wilson up to your den for a
while, Herbert, Ethel and I are going to have a cozy little time with
the children, aren’t we, dear?”
“Have a cigar?” said Mr. Belmore as the two men seated themselves
comfortably in a couple of wooden armchairs in the sunny little
apartment hung with a miscellaneous collection of guns, swords, and
rods, the drawing of a bloated trout and a dusty pair of antlers.
“Thank you, I’m not smoking now,” said Mr. Wilson with a hungry look at
the open box on the table beside him.
“Oh!” said his host genially, “so you’re at that stage of the game.
Well, I’ve been there myself. You have my sympathy. But this won’t last,
you know.”
“Does your wife like smoking?”
“Loves it,” said Mr. Belmore, sinking the fact of his official limit to
four cigars a day. “That is, of course, she thinks it’s a dirty habit,
and unhealthy, and all that sort of thing, you know, but it doesn’t make
any _difference_ to her—not a pin’s worth. Cheer up, old fellow, you’ll
get to this place too.”
“Looks like it,” said the other bitterly. “Here I haven’t seen her for a
week—I came two hundred miles on purpose yesterday, and now she won’t
even look at me. I don’t know what’s the matter—haven’t the least
idea—and I can’t _get_ her to tell me. I have to be off to-morrow at
seven o’clock, too—I call it pretty hard lines.”
“Let me see,” said Mr. Belmore judicially, knitting his brows as if
burrowing into the past as he smoked. “Perhaps I can help you out. What
have you been writing to her? Telling her all about what you’ve been
doing, and just sending your love at the end? They don’t like that, you
know.”
Mr. Wilson shook his head. “No, upon my soul I’ve done nothing but tell
her how I—how I was looking forward to—oh, hang it, Belmore, the letters
have been all _right_, I know that.”
“H’m,” said Mr. Belmore, “there’s got to be _something_ back of it, you
know. Seen any girls since you’ve been gone?”
Mr. Wilson hastened to shake his head more emphatically than before.
“Not one,” he asseverated with the relief of complete innocence. “Didn’t
even meet a soul I knew, except Brower—you remember Dick Brower? I went
into a jeweler’s to get my glasses mended and found him buying a
souvenir spoon for his fiancée.”
“O—o—h!” said Mr. Belmore intelligently, “and did you buy a present for
Edith?”
“No, I didn’t. She made me promise not to buy anything more for her; she
thinks I’m spending too much money, and that I ought to economize.”
“And did you tell her about Brower?”
“Why, of course I did—as we were coming out this morning.”
Mr. Wilson stared blankly at his friend.
“Chump!” said Mr. Belmore. He bit off the end of a new cigar and threw
it away. “Wilson, my poor fellow, you’re so besotted in ignorance that I
don’t know how to let the light in on you. A man is a fool by the side
of his fiancée, anyhow.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said the bewildered Wilson stiffly. “_I_
don’t know what I’m to do.”
“No, of course you don’t—but Edith does—you can just trust her for that.
A girl _always_ knows what a man ought to do—she can give him cards and
spades and beat him every time.”
“Then why doesn’t she _tell_ me what she wants? I asked her to,
particularly.”
“Oh, no! She’ll tell you everything the opposite—that is, half the time.
She’ll put every obstacle possible in your way, to see if you’re man
enough to walk over ’em; that’s what she wants to find out; if you’re
man enough to have your own way in spite of her; and, of course, if you
aren’t, you’re an awful disappointment.”
“Are you sure?” said Mr. Wilson deeply, after an awestruck pause. “Half
the time, you say. But how am I to find out when she means—I give you my
word, Belmore, that I thought—I suppose I could have brought her a small
present, anyway, in spite of what she said; a souvenir spoon—but she
hates souvenir spoons.”
“You’ll have to cipher it out for yourself, old man,” said Mr. Belmore.
“_I_ don’t set out to interpret any woman’s moods. I only give you cold,
bare facts. But if I were you,” he added impartially, “I’d go down after
a while and try and get her alone, you know, and say something. You can,
if you try.” A swish of skirts outside of the open door made Mr. Wilson
jump forward as Mrs. Belmore came in sight with her friend. The latter
had her arm around the older woman, and her form drooped toward her as
they passed the two men. The eyes of the girl were red, and her lips had
a patient quiver. Mr. Wilson gave an exclamation and sprang forward as
she disappeared in the further room.
It was some hours later that the husband and wife met unexpectedly upon
the stairs with a glad surprise.
“You don’t mean to say it’s you—alone!” he whispered.
“Wait—is she coming up?” They clutched each other spasmodically as they
listened to the sound of a deflecting footstep. There was a breathless
moment, and then the chords of a funeral march boomed forth upon the
air. The loud pedal was doing its best to supplement those long and
strenuous fingers.
The listeners breathed a sigh of relief.
“He’s gone to the station for a time table,” whispered the husband with
a delighted grin: “though I can stand _him_ all right. We had a nice
walk with the little girls, after he got tired of playing hide and seek.
I wished you were with us. You must be about used up. How are you
getting along with her?”
“Oh, pretty well.” She let herself be drawn down on the hall window seat
at the top of the landing. “You see, Edith really feels dreadfully, poor
girl.”
“What about?”
“Herbert, she isn’t really sure that she loves him.”
“Isn’t sure! After they’ve been engaged for a year!”
“That’s just it. She says if they had been married out of hand, in the
first flush of the novelty, she wouldn’t have had time, perhaps, to have
any doubts. But it’s the seeing him all the time that’s made her think.”
“Made her think _what_?”
“Whether she loves him or not; whether they are really suited. I
remember that I used to feel that way about you, dear. Oh, you know,
Herbert, it’s a very serious thing for a girl. She says she knows her
whole life is at stake; she thinks about it all the time.”
“How about his?”
“Well, that’s what I said,” admitted Mrs. Belmore. “She says that she
feels that _he_ is so rational and self-poised that she makes little
difference in his life either way—it has come to her all at once. She
says his looking at everything in a matter-of-fact way just chills her;
she longs for a whole-souled enthusiasm that can sweep everything before
it. She feels that if they are married she will have to keep up the
ideal for both of them, and she doesn’t know whether she can.”
“No, she can’t,” said Mr. Belmore.
“She says she could if she loved him enough,” pursued Mrs. Belmore.
“It’s the _if_ that kills her. She says that when she wakes up in the
morning that she feels as if she’d die if she didn’t see him before
night, and when she _does_ see him it’s all a dreadful disappointment to
her; she can’t talk to him at all, she feels perfectly hard and stony;
then, the moment he’s gone, she’s crazy to have him back again. She
cries herself thin over it.”
“She’s pretty bony, anyway,” said Mr. Belmore impartially.
“Even his appearance changes to her. She says sometimes he looks like a
Greek god, so that she could go down on her knees to him, and at other
times—Once she happened to catch a glimpse of him in a horrid red
sweater, polishing his shoes, and she said she didn’t get over it for
weeks, he looked positively _ordinary_, like some of the men you see in
the trolley cars.”
“Oh, good gracious!” protested Mr. Belmore feebly. “Oh, good _gracious_,
petty! This is _too_ much.”
“Hush—don’t laugh so loud—be quiet,” said his wife anxiously.
“If Wilson _ever_ looks like a Greek god to her, she’s all right, she
loves him—you can tell her so for me. _Wilson!_ Here are we sitting up
here like a pair of lovers, and they—Hello!”
The hall door opened and shut, the piano lid closed simultaneously with
a bang, and there was a swirl of skirts again towards the staircase that
scattered the guilty pair on the landing. The hostess heaved a patient
sigh.
“They _shall_ speak,” said Mrs. Belmore when another hour had gone with
the situation still unchanged. Her gentle voice had a note of
determination. “I can’t understand why he doesn’t _make_ her. She is
literally crying her eyes out, because the whole day has been lost. Why
didn’t you send him into the parlor for a book as I told you to, when I
came up to take care of Dorothy?”
“He wouldn’t go—he said he wasn’t doing the kindergarten act any more.
Hang it, I don’t blame him. A man objects to being made a fool of before
people, and he’s tired of it. Here he goes off again to-morrow for two
weeks, and she with no more heart than—”
“Where is he now?” asked Mrs. Belmore.
“Upstairs in my room, smoking.”
“_Smoking!_ I thought he’d promised her solemnly not to.”
“Yes, he did; but he says he doesn’t care a—red apple; he’s going to
have some comfort out of the day. I’ve left him with a box of cigars;
good ones, too. He’s having the time of his life.”
“O—o—h!” said Mrs. Belmore with the rapt expression of one who sees
beyond the veil. When she spoke it was with impressive slowness. “When
you hear me come downstairs with Edith and go in the parlor, you wait a
moment and then bring him down—_with his cigar_—into the library. Do you
understand?”
“No,” said Mr. Belmore.
“Oh, Herbert! If she sees him _smoking_—! There’s no time to lose, for I
have to get tea to-night. When I call you, leave him and come at once,
do you hear? Don’t stop a minute—just come, before they get a chance to
follow.”
“You bet I’ll come,” said Mr. Belmore, “like a bird to its—I will,
really, petty.”
That he nearly knocked her down by his wildly tragic rush when she
called from the back hall—“Herbert, please come at once! I can’t turn
off the water,” was a mere detail—they clung to each other in silent
laughter, behind the enshrouding porti—res, not daring to move. The
footfall of the deserted Edith was heard advancing from the front room
to the library, and her clear and solemn voice, as of one actuated only
by the lofty dictates of duty, penetrated distinctly to the listeners.
“Alan Wilson, is it possible that you are _smoking?_ Have you broken
your promised word?”
“Well, they’re at it, at last,” said Mr. Belmore, relapsing into a chair
in the kitchen with a sigh of relief, and drawing a folded newspaper
from his pocket. “I wouldn’t be in his shoes for a farm.”
“Oh, it will be all right now,” said Mrs. Belmore serenely. She added
with some irrelevancy, “I’ve left the children to undress each other;
they’ve been _so_ good. It’s been such a different day, though, from
what we had planned.”
“It’s too bad that you have to get the tea.”
“Oh, I don’t mind that a bit.”
She had tucked up the silken skirt of her gown and was deftly measuring
out coffee—after the swift, preliminary shaking of the fire with which
every woman takes possession of a kitchen—pouring the water into the
coffee-pot from the steaming kettle, and then vibrating between the
kitchen closet and the butler’s pantry with the quick, capable movements
of one who knows her ground thoroughly. “Really, it isn’t any trouble.
Margaret leaves half of the things ready, you know. If you’ll just lift
down that dish of salad for me—and the cold chicken is beside it. I hate
to ask you to get up, but—Thank you. How good the coffee smells! I know
you always like the coffee I make.”
“You bet I do,” said Mr. Belmore with fervor. “Say, petty, you don’t
think you could come out now and take a look at the garden? I’m almost
sure the peas are beginning to show.”
“No, I’m afraid there isn’t time. We’ll have to give it up for this
Sunday.” She paused for a great effort. “If you’d like to go by
yourself, dear—”
“Wouldn’t you mind?”
She paused again, looking at him with her clear-eyed seriousness.
“I don’t think I mind now, but I might—afterwards.”