This episode marked the beginning of what was to be a three years'
refrain.
"Ben, we must go housekeeping. It's an outrage to board, with a girl
Lilly's age. Not as much as a parlor for her to bring her friends, and a
great big girl like her without a room to herself! It's not even
delicate."
"Well, Carrie, I'm willing."
"I know, until the time comes. I don't forget so easily the way you
sighed all night in your sleep that time I came near renting the house
on Delmar Avenue. Where is the money coming from! The minute that old
business down there earns a penny, right back into it go the earnings,
instead of drawing out a few dollars for the comfort of his family, like
any other man would."
"But, Carrie--"
"There is not another woman in the world would stand for it but me. A
woman that could enjoy a little home of her own as much as I! What do I
get out of it, I'd like to know! Stint. Stint. Stint. Shove it all back
into that old rope-and-twine business down there that doesn't show a
cent of capital when you take stock except in rope, rope, rope, until
I'd like to hang myself with some of it."
"Now, little woman, you got up on the wrong side of bed this morning.
Just hold your horses. These are tight times, I admit, but we have
our health--"
"I've heard that since I'm married. Health! Suppose we have got our
health. We can't thank the business for that."
"Lilly, your mother certainly got up on the wrong side of bed this
morning, didn't she?"
"Well, it's right discouraging, if you ask me."
"You're all right, little woman."
"Yes, I know," trying not to smile, "I'm all right when it don't cost
nothing and when it comes to the dirty work of trying to make two
ends meet."
"You're certainly a splendid manager. No one can take that away from
you."
"Well, I wish you would both appreciate it a little more."
"We do appreciate it, don't we, Lilly?"
"Yes, papa."
Her second year in High School, Lilly was kept out for five weeks by an
attack of typhoid fever.
An aversion for physical shortcoming, from her mother's occasional
headaches to the mortally afflicted Mr. Hazzard with the great chronic
sore crisscrossed with court plaster at the end of one of his eyes,
amounted in Lilly to something actually Indian.
"Oh, mamma, if I had a headache, I wouldn't always be talking about it.
People aren't interested."
"I'm going to tell your father when he comes home to-night what a
sympathetic daughter I have. If ever I fall sick the City Hospital will
be the place for me. When I see the way that Flora Kemble carries her
mother around and the way my own daughter sympathizes with me. If I
don't tell your father this night!"
It was this queer little congenital urge that kept Lilly on her feet for
two weeks after the malady had hold of her. With a stoicism that taxed
her cruelly, she would march smilingly off to school, a bombardment of
pains shooting through her head, her hands and tongue dry, a ball and
chain of inertia dragging at her ankles.
"Lilly, what is the matter? Why don't you eat your bread and butter
after school? Has Mrs. Schum said anything?"
"No, no, mamma. I'm not hungry, that's all."
"Funny. Open the closet. There is a basket of oranges behind your
father's overcoat, and a bag of baby pretzels, too."
"Goodness! mamma, if I was hungry, I'd eat."
"Don't you feel well, Lilly?"
"Of course I feel well, mamma. Why shouldn't I?"
But next day, at her after-school hour of practice, a small discordant
crash broke suddenly in upon "Chaminade's Scarf Dance" and Mrs. Becker's
rhythmic rocking above. Lilly had fainted, with her head in her arms and
face down among the keys.
Followed two weeks that crowded up the little back parlor with anxiety,
the tension of two doctors in consultation, and a sense of hysteria that
was always just a scratch beneath the surface of Mrs. Becker. She would
break suddenly into loud and unexpected fits of crying, crushing her
palms up against her mouth; would waken from a light doze beside the
bed, on the shriek of a nightmare, and have literally to be dragged from
the room. She harassed the doctors with questions that only the course
of the disease could answer.
The crisis came in the watches of the night, Lilly very straight and
very white and light of breathing in the center of her parents' bed, her
glossy hair in a thick plait over each shoulder, her fine white and
developed chest hardly rising.
"O God! help me to live this night! Ben! Ben!"
"Carrie, you're only making yourself sick and not helping the child."
"My baby! My beautiful snow-white baby! The best child that ever lived!
Help me to live this night!"
"Carrie, little woman, if only you won't take on so. There's every
reason to hope for the best. The doctor assured us."
"How long before we know? Go get Doctor Allison over. Ask Roy Kemble to
run over to Horton's and telephone for Doctor Birch. I want them
here. My baby!"
"Carrie, Carrie, haven't they told you time and time again there is
nothing they can do now? Don't antagonize Doctor Birch by calling him
over here again to-night. Everything is being done for the child. Now
all we can do is to sit and wait and hope for the best."
"You don't care! You're made of iron. At a time like this you stop to
consider the doctors' feelings. Mine don't count. My baby. Get well,
Lilly. Mamma's been cross at times, but never again. We'll do everything
to make you happy. You can read your eyes out and mamma won't turn out
the light on you. Mamma will buy you books and a box of paints and a
little bird's-eye-maple room all your own. Lilly, mamma's baby. We're
going housekeeping--your own piano--your own room. Aren't we, Ben?
Aren't we?"
"Yes, Carrie."
"You can take your choice, baby, of all the things you want to be. Mamma
won't oppose any more, or papa. Opera singing if you want it. You come
by it naturally from my choir voice. Whatever you say, baby. Even an
actress and all the elocution and singing lessons you--"
"Carrie!"
"Oh, you don't care! You're only her father. What does a father know?
You don't care."
Against this age-old indictment of paternity, and absolutely without
precedent, the patient, the iron-gray head of Mr. Becker fell forward, a
fearful and silent storm of sobs beating against his repression.
Full of dumfounded hysteria, walking on her knees around the bed edge to
him, Mrs. Becker drew down his head into the wreath of her arms, kissing
into it, mingling her tears with his, and tasting their anguish.
"My darling! Ben--please, darling! I say a lot of things I don't mean.
You are my husband--and my life. Ben--don't! I can't stand it! Ben!"
At six o'clock Lilly opened her eyes. They were clear and cool and the
petal-like quality was out on her skin.
"Sweet Alice," she said, "oh, Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt," a bit of dream
floating up with her like seaweed to the surface of consciousness.
"Sweet Alice."
She had been reading _Trilby_, surreptitiously filched from Mrs.
Kemble's stack of novels.
"Lilly--mamma's Lilly!"
"Where--I--Where--"
"In your own room, sweetheart, and your own mother and father beside
you."
"I thought--Sweet Alice--"
"The fever is gone now, Lilly. You won't have any of those thoughts any
more. Go to sleep now, papa's girl."
"I must have been singing--'Faust'--what makes you and papa--so
angry--with me--dears?"
"We're not, Lilly. Nothing makes us angry any more."
She was too tired to smile.
"I kept dreaming, mamma, that my hair was two big honey-colored braids
all wound up with pearls, like Marguerite's picture in _Stories of
the Operas_."
"Go to sleep, Lilly, like a good child. Our girl has got too much sense
to fill her head up with such nonsense."
"No, no, papa, I won't have common sense. I want to ride up to meet the
sun, like the princess in--"
"She wants to what? Are you sure her fever is gone, Carrie?"
"Nonsense! It is stuff she reads in her fairy tales. Yes, darling,
anything you want."
"You know, mamma--pearls--in my hair--"
"Yes, yes, darling. Sh-h-h!"
"Mamma?"
"Yes."
"We're middle-class, aren't we?"
"What does she mean?"
"Middle-class people, I mean. You know."
"Why, yes, dear, we're middle-class. I guess that is what you'd call it.
What an idea!"
"Help me."
"Yes, yes. How, baby? The doctor will be here any--"
"You don't know what I mean. No matter what I say, you don't know what I
mean. Isn't that terrible?"
"Help you to get well, that's what mamma and papa are going to do."
"No, no, no! Help me--out--up!"
Presently Lilly fell asleep. To her watching parents her light and
regular breathing took on the meter of a Doxology.