I
The exception that proved Old Chester's rule as to the subjection of
Youth was found in the household of Mr. Thomas Dilworth.
When the Dilworth children (at least the two girls) hung about their
father when he came home at night or teased and scolded and laughed at
him at their friendly breakfast-table, an observer might have thought
himself miles away from Old Chester and its well-brought-up Youth. The
way those girls talk to Thomas Dilworth! "Where will it end?" said Old
Chester, solemnly. For instance, the annual joke in the Dilworth
family was that father had been in love with mother for as many years
as she was old, less so many minutes.
Now, imagine Old Chester children indulging in such familiarities!
Yet on Mrs. Dilworth's birthday this family witticism was always in
order:
"Father, how long have you been mother's beau?"
And Thomas, rosy, handsome, looking at least ten years younger than his
Amelia, would say: "Well, let's see: forty-one years" (or two or three,
as the case might be), "eleven months, twenty-nine days, twenty-three
hours, and forty minutes; she was twenty minutes old when I first laid
eyes on her, and during those twenty minutes I was heart-whole."
But Mrs. Dilworth, smiling vaguely behind her coffee-cups, would
protest: "I never heard anything about it, Tom, until you were sixteen."
And then the girls would declare that they must be told just what
father said when he was sixteen and mother was twelve. But Thomas drew
the line at that. "Come! come! you mustn't talk about love-making. As
for marrying, I don't mean to let you girls get married at all. And
Ned here had better not let me catch him thinking of such nonsense
until he's twenty-five. He can get married (if I like the girl) when
he is twenty-eight."
"You got married at twenty-two, sir," Edwin demurred.
"If you can find a woman like your mother, you can get married at
twenty-two. But you can't. They don't make 'em any more. So you've
got to wait. And remember, I've decided not to let Mary and Nancy get
married, ever. I don't propose to bring up a brace of long-legged
girls, and clothe 'em and feed 'em and pay their doctors' bills, and
then, just as they get old enough to amount to anything and quit being
nuisances, hand 'em over to another fellow. No, sir! You've got to
stay at home with me. Do you understand?"
The girls screamed at this, and flung themselves upon him to kiss him
and pull his hair.
No wonder Old Chester was shocked.
Yet, in spite of such happenings, Thomas and Amelia Dilworth were of
the real Old Chester. They were not tainted with _newness_--that sad
dispensation of Providence which had to be borne by such people as the
Macks or the Hayeses, or those very rich (but really worthy) Smiths.
The Dilworths were not new; yet their three children had the
training--or the lack of training--that made the Hayes children and
their kind a subject for Old Chester's prayers.
"Who can say what the result of Milly Dilworth's negligence will be?"
Mrs. Drayton said, sighing, to Dr. Lavendar; who only reminded her that
folks didn't gather thistles of figs--generally speaking.
But in spite of Dr. Lavendar's optimism, it was a queer household,
according to Old Chester lights.... In the first place, the father and
mother were more unlike than is generally considered to be
matrimonially safe. Amelia was a dear, good soul, but, as Miss Helen
Hayes said once, "with absolutely no mind"; while Thomas Dilworth was
eminently level-headed, although very fond (so Mrs. Drayton said) of
female society. And it must be admitted that Thomas had more than once
caused his Milly a slight pang by such fondness. But at least he was
never conscious that he had done so--and Milly never told him. (But
Mrs. Drayton said that that was something she could not forgive in a
married gentleman. "My dear husband," said Mrs. Drayton, "has never
wandered from me, even in imagination.") Added to conjugal incongruity
was this indifference on the part of Thomas and his wife to the
training of the children. The three young Dilworths were allowed to
grow up exactly as they pleased. It had worked well enough with Mary
and Nancy, who were good girls, affectionate and sensible--so sensible
that Nancy, when she was eighteen, had practically taken the
housekeeping out of her mother's hands; and Mary, at sixteen, looked
out for herself and her affairs most successfully. With Edwin the
Dilworth system had not been so satisfactory. He was conceited (though
that is only to be expected of the male creature at nineteen) and
rather selfish; and he had an unlovely reserve, in which he was
strikingly unlike his father, who overflowed with confidences. This,
and other unlikeness, was, no doubt, the reason that there were
constant small differences between them. And Mrs. Dilworth--vague,
gentle soul!--was somehow unable to smooth the differences over as
successfully as most mothers do.
Now, smoothing things over is practically a profession to mothers of
families. But Milly Dilworth had never succeeded in it. In the first
place, she had no gift of words; the more she felt, the more
inexpressive she became; but, worst of all, she had, poor woman, not
the slightest sense of humor. Now, in dealing with husbands and
children (especially with husbands), though you have the tongues of
men--which are thought to be more restrained than those of women--and
though you have the gift of prophecy (a common gift of wives) and
understand all mysteries--say, of housekeeping--and though you give
your body to be used up and worn out for their sakes, yet all these
things profit you nothing if you have no sense of humor. And Milly
Dilworth had none.
That was why she could not understand.
She loved, in her tender, undemonstrative way, her shy, unpractical,
secretive Edwin and her two capable girls; she loved, with the single,
silent passion of her soul, her generous, selfish, light-hearted Tom,
who took her wordless worship as unconsciously and simply as he took
the air he breathed; she loved them all. But she did not pretend to
understand them. Thus she stood always a little aside, watching and
loving, and wondering sometimes in her simple way; but often suffering,
as people with no sense of humor are apt to suffer. Dear, dull, gentle
Milly! No one could remember a harsh word of hers, or mean deed, or a
little judgment. No wonder Dr. Lavendar felt confident that there
would be no thistles in her household.
Thomas Dilworth had the same comfortable conviction, especially in
regard to his girls. "Now, Milly, honestly," he used to say, "apart
from the fact that they are ours, don't you really think they are the
nicest girls in Old Chester?"
Milly would admit, in her brief way, that they were good children.
"And Edwin means all right," the father would assure himself; and then
add that he couldn't understand their boy--"at least, I suppose he's
ours? Willy King says so. I have thought perhaps he was a changeling,
put into the cradle the first day."
"But, Tom," Milly would protest, anxiously, "Neddy couldn't be a
changeling. He was never out of my sight for the first week--not even
to be taken out of the room to be shown to people. Besides, he has
your chin and my eyes."
"Well, if you really think so?" Thomas would demur. And Mrs. Dilworth
always said, earnestly, that she was sure of it.
Still, in spite of eyes and chin, Ned's unpracticalness was an anxiety
to his father, and his uncommunicativeness a constant irritation.
Thomas himself was ready to share anything he possessed, money or
opinions or hopes, with any friend, almost with any acquaintance. "I
don't want to know anybody's business," he used to say; "I'm not
inquisitive, Milly; you know I'm not. But I hate hiding things! Why
shouldn't he say where he's going when he goes out in the evening?
Sneaking off, as if he were ashamed."
"He just doesn't think of it," the mother would say, trying to smooth
it over.
"Well, he ought to think of it," the father would grumble, eager to be
smoothed.
But Milly found it harder to reconcile her husband to their boy's
indifference to business than to his reserves.
"He sees fit to look down on the hardware trade," Tom told his wife,
angrily. "'Well, sir,' I said to him the other day, 'it's given you
your bread-and-butter for nineteen years; yes--and your fiddle, too,
and your everlasting music lessons.' And I'll tell you what, Milly, a
man who looks down on his business will find his business looking down
on him. And it's a good business--it's a darned good business. If Ned
doesn't have the sense to see it, he had better go and play his fiddle
and hold out his hat for pennies."
Milly looked anxiously sympathetic.
"I don't know what is going to become of him," Thomas went on. "When
you come to provide for three out of the hardware business, nobody gets
very much."
Mrs. Dilworth was silent.
"I was talking about him to Dr. Lavendar yesterday, and he said: 'Oh,
he'll fall in love one of these days, and he'll see that fiddling won't
buy his wife her shoe-strings; then he'll take to the hardware
business,' Dr. Lavendar said. It's all very well to talk about his
falling in love and taking to business; but if he falls in love, I'll
have another mouth to fill. And maybe more," he added, grimly.
"Not for a year, anyway," his wife said, hopefully. "And, besides, I
don't think Neddy's thinking of such a thing."
"I hope not, at his age."
"You were engaged when you were nineteen."
"My dear, I wasn't Ned."
Mrs. Dilworth was silent.
"The Packards telegraphed to-day that they wouldn't take that reaper,"
Tom Dilworth said.
Milly seemed to search for words of sympathy, but before she found them
Tom began to talk of something else; he never waited for his wife's
replies, or, indeed, expected them. He was so constituted that he had
to have a listener; and during all their married life she had listened.
When she replied, she was a sounding-board, echoing back his own
opinions; when she was silent, he took her silence to mean agreement.
Tom used to say that his Milly wasn't one of the smart kind; he didn't
like smartness in a woman, anyway; but she had darned good sense;--for,
like the rest of us, Thomas Dilworth had a deep belief in the
intelligence of the people who agreed with him....
"I have a great mind," he rambled on, "to go up to the Hayeses'. You
know that note is due on the 15th, and I believe I'll have to ask him
to extend it. I hate to do it, but Packard has upset my calculations,
and I'll have to get an extension, or else sell something out; and just
now I don't like to do that."
"Very well," she said. It was her birthday--the one day in the year
that her Thomas remembered that he had been in love with her for so
many years, months, days, hours, minutes--a fact she never for one day
in the year forgot. But she could no more have reminded him of the day
than she could have flown. She was constitutionally inexpressive.
Tom began to whistle:
[Illustration: music fragment]
but broke off to say, "Well, since you advise it, I'll see Hayes"; then
he gave her a kiss, and immediately forgot her--as completely as he had
forgotten his supper or any other comfortable and absolutely necessary
thing. Then he lighted his cigar and started for the Hayeses'.