For their daughter's first Thanksgiving Day the Olivers invited a dozen
friends to their Oakland house for dinner; the first really large
gathering of their married lives.
"We have always been too poor, or I haven't been well, or there's been
some other good reason for lying low," wrote Mrs. Oliver to Mrs.
Carroll, "but this year the stork is apparently filling previous
orders, and our trio is well, and we have been blessed beyond all rhyme
and reason, and want to give thanks. Anna and Conrad and the O'Connors
have promised, Jinny will be here, and I'm only waiting to hear from
you three to write and ask Phil and Mary and Pillsey and the baby. So
DO come--for next year Anna says that it's her turn, and by the year
after we may be so prosperous that I'll have to keep two maids, and
miss half the fun--it will certainly break my heart if I ever have to
say, 'We'll have roast turkey, Jane, and mince pies,' instead of making
them myself. PLEASE come, we are dying to see the little cousins
together, they will be simply heavenly---"
"There's more than wearing your best dress and eating too much turkey
to Thanksgiving," said Susan to Billy, when they were extending the
dining-table to its largest proportions on the day before Thanksgiving.
"It's just one of those things, like having a baby, that you have to DO
to appreciate. It's old-fashioned, and homelike, and friendly. Perhaps
I have a commonplace, middle-class mind, but I do love all this! I love
the idea of everyone arriving, and a big fire down here, and Betts and
her young man trying to sneak away to the sun-room, and the boys
sitting in Grandma's lap, and being given tastes of white meat and
mashed potato at dinnertime. Me to the utterly commonplace, every time!"
"When you are commonplace, Sue," said her husband, coming out from
under the table, where hasps had been absorbing his attention, "you'll
be ready for the family vault at Holy Cross, and not one instant
before!"
"No, but the consolation is," Susan reflected, "that if this is
happiness,--if it makes me feel like the Lord Mayor's wife to have
three children, a husband whom most people think is either a saint or a
fool,--I think he's a little of both, myself!--and a new sun-room built
off my dining-room,--why, then there's an unexpected amount of
happiness in this world! In me--a plain woman, sir, with my hands still
odorous of onion dressing, and a safety-pin from my daughter's
bathing-struggle still sticking into my twelve-and-a-half-cent
gingham,--in me, I say, you behold a contented human creature, who
confidently hopes to live to be ninety-seven!"
"And then we'll have eternity together!" said the dusty Billy, with an
arm about her.
"And not a minute too long!" answered his suddenly serious wife.
"You absolutely radiate content, Sue," Anna said to her wistfully, the
next day.
Anna had come early to Oakland, to have luncheon and a few hours'
gossip with her hostess before the family's arrival for the six o'clock
dinner. The doctor's wife reached the gate in her own handsome little
limousine, and Susan had shared her welcome of Anna with enthusiasm for
Anna's loose great sealskin coat.
"Take the baby and let me try it on," said Susan. "Woman--it is the
most gorgeous thing I ever saw!"
"Conrad says I will need it in the east,--we go after Christmas," Anna
said, her face buried against the baby.
Susan, having satisfied herself that what she really wanted, when
Billy's ship came in, was a big sealskin coat, had taken her guest
upstairs, to share the scuffle that preceded the boys' naps, and hold
Josephine while Susan put the big bedroom in order, and laid out the
little white suits for the afternoon.
Now the two women were sitting together, Susan in a rocker, with her
sleepy little daughter in the curve of her arm, Anna in a deep low
chair, with her head thrown back, and her eyes on the baby.
"Radiate happiness?" Susan echoed briskly, "My dear, you make me
ashamed. Why, there are whole days when I get really snappy and
peevish,--truly I do! running from morning until night. As for getting
up in the dead of night, to feed the baby, Billy says I look like
desolation--'like something the cat dragged in,' was his latest pretty
compliment. But no," Susan interrupted herself honestly, "I won't deny
it. I AM happy. I am the happiest woman in the world."
"Yet you always used to begin your castles in Spain with a million
dollars," Anna said, half-wistfully, half-curiously. "Everything else
being equal, Sue," she pursued, "wouldn't you rather be rich?"
"Everything else never IS equal," Susan answered thoughtfully. "I used
to think it was--but it's not! Now, for instance, take the case of
Isabel Wallace. Isabel is rich and beautiful, she has a good
husband,--to me he's rather tame, but probably she thinks of Billy as a
cave-man, so that doesn't count!--she has everything money can buy, she
has a gorgeous little boy, older than Mart, and now she has a girl, two
or three months old. And she really is a darling, Nance, you never
liked her particularly---"
"Well, she was so perfect," pleaded Anna smiling, "so gravely wise and
considerate and low-voiced, and light-footed---!"
"Only she's honestly and absolutely all of that!" Susan defended her
eagerly, "there's no pose! She really is unspoiled and good--my dear,
if the other women in her set were one-tenth as good as Isabel!
However, to go back. She came over here to spend the day with me, just
before Jo was born, and we had a wonderful day. Billy and I were taking
our dinners at a boarding-house, for a few months, and Big Mary had
nothing else to do but look out for the boys in the afternoon. Isabel
watched me giving them their baths, and feeding them their lunches, and
finally she said, 'I'd like to do that for Alan, but I never do!' 'Why
don't you?' I said. Well, she explained that in the first place there
was a splendid experienced woman paid twenty-five dollars a week to do
it, and that she herself didn't know how to do it half as well. She
said that when she went into the nursery there was a general smoothing
out of her way before her, one maid handing her the talcum, another
running with towels, and Miss Louise, as they call her, pleasantly
directing her and amusing Alan. Naturally, she can't drive them all
out; she couldn't manage without them! In fact, we came to the
conclusion that you have to be all or nothing to a baby. If Isabel made
up her mind to put Alan to bed every night say, she'd have to cut out a
separate affair every day for it, rush home from cards, or from the
links, or from the matinee, or from tea--Jack wouldn't like it, and she
says she doubts if it would make much impression on Alan, after all!"
"I'd do it, just the same!" said Anna, "and I wouldn't have the nurse
standing around, either--and yet, I suppose that's not very
reasonable," she went on, after a moment's thought, "for that's
Conrad's free time. We drive nearly every day, and half the time dine
somewhere out of town. And his having to operate at night so much makes
him want to sleep in the morning, so that we couldn't very well have a
baby in the room. I suppose I'd do as the rest do, pay a fine nurse,
and grab minutes with the baby whenever I could!"
"You have to be poor to get all the fun out of children," Susan said.
"They're at their very sweetest when they get their clothes off, and
run about before their nap, or when they wake up and call you, or when
you tell them stories at night."
"But, Sue, a woman like Mrs. Furlong does NOT have to work so hard,"
Anna said decidedly, "you must admit that! Her life is full of ease and
beauty and power--doesn't that count? Doesn't that give her a chance
for self-development, and a chance to make herself a real companion to
her husband?" "Well, the problems of the world aren't answered in
books, Nance. It just doesn't seem INTERESTING, or worth while to me!
She could read books, of course, and attend lectures, and study
languages. But--did you see the 'Protest' last week?"
"No, I didn't! It comes, and I put it aside to read--"
"Well, it was a corking number. Bill's been asserting for months, you
know, that the trouble isn't any more in any special class, it's
because of misunderstanding everywhere. He made the boys wild by saying
that when there are as many people at the bottom of the heap reaching
up, as there are people at the top reaching down, there'll be no more
trouble between capital and labor! And last week he had statistics, he
showed them how many thousands of rich people are trying--in their
entirely unintelligent ways!--to reach down, and--my dear, it was
really stirring! You know Himself can write when he tries!--and he
spoke of the things the laboring class doesn't do, of the way it
educates its children, of the way it spends its money,--it was as good
as anything he's ever done, and it made no end of talk!
"And," concluded Susan contentedly, "we're at the bottom of the heap,
instead of struggling up in the world, we're struggling down! When I
talk to my girls' club, I can honestly say that I know some of their
trials. I talked to a mothers' meeting the other day, about simple
dressing and simple clothes for children, and they knew I had three
children and no more money than they. And they know that my husband
began his business career as a puddler, just as their sons are
beginning now. In short, since the laboring class can't, seemingly,
help itself, and the upper class can't help it, the situation seems to
be waiting for just such people as we are, who know both sides!"
"A pretty heroic life, Susan!" Anna said shaking her head.
"Heroic? Nothing!" Susan answered, in healthy denial. "I like it! I've
eaten maple mousse and guinea-hen at the Saunders', and I've eaten
liver-and-bacon and rice pudding here, and I like this best. Billy's a
hero, if you like," she added, suddenly, "Did I tell you about the
fracas in August?"
"Not between you and Billy?" Anna laughed.
"No-o-o! We fight," said Susan modestly, "when he thinks Mart ought to
be whipped and I don't, or when little Billums wipes sticky fingers on
his razor strop, but he ain't never struck me, mum, and that's more
than some can say! No, but this was really quite exciting," Susan
resumed, seriously. "Let me see how it began--oh, yes!--Isabel
Wallace's father asked Billy to dinner at the Bohemian Club,--in
August, this was. Bill was terribly pleased, old Wallace introduced him
to a lot of men, and asked him if he would like to be put up---"
"Conrad would put him up, Sue---" Anna said jealously.
"My dear, wait--wait until you hear the full iniquity of that old divil
of a Wallace! Well, he ordered cocktails, and he 'dear boyed' Bill, and
they sat down to dinner. Then he began to taffy the 'Protest,' he said
that the railroad men were all talking about it, and he asked Bill what
he valued it at. Bill said it wasn't for sale. I can imagine just how
graciously he said it, too! Well, old Mr. Wallace laughed, and he said
that some of the railroad men were really beginning to enjoy the way
Billy pitched into them; he said he had started life pretty humbly
himself; he said that he wanted some way of reaching his men just now,
and he thought that the 'Protest' was the way to do it. He said that it
was good as far as it went, but that it didn't go far enough. He
proposed to work its circulation up into hundreds of thousands, to buy
it at Billy's figure, and to pay him a handsome salary,--six thousand
was hinted, I believe,--as editor, under a five-year contract! Billy
asked if the policy of the paper was to be dictated, and he said, no,
no, everything left to him! Billy came home dazed, my dear, and I
confess I was dazed too. Mr. Wallace had said that he wanted Billy, as
a sort of side-issue, to live in San Rafael, so that they could see
each other easily,--and I wish you could see the house he'd let us have
for almost nothing! Then there would be a splendid round sum for the
paper, thirty or forty thousand probably, AND the salary! I saw myself
a lady, Nance, with a 'rising young man' for a husband---"
"But, Sue--but, Sue," Anna said eagerly, "Billy would be editor--Billy
would be in charge--there would be a contract--nobody could call that
selling the paper, or changing the policy of the 'Protest'---"
"Exactly what I said!" laughed Susan. "However, the next morning we
rushed over to the Cudahys--you remember that magnificent old person
you and Conrad met here? That's Clem. And his wife is quite as
wonderful as he is. And Clem of course tore our little dream to rags---"
"Oh, HOW?" Anna exclaimed regretfully.
"Oh, in every way. He made it betrayal, and selling the birthright.
Billy saw it at once. As Clem said, where would Billy be the minute
they questioned an article of his, or gave him something for insertion,
or cut his proof? And how would the thing SOUND--a railroad magnate
owning the 'Protest'?"
"He might do more good that way than in any other," mourned Anna
rebelliously, "and my goodness, Sue, isn't his first duty to you and
the children?"
"Bill said that selling the 'Protest' would make his whole life a
joke," Susan said. "And now I see it, too. Of course I wept and wailed,
at the time, but I love greatness, Nance, and I truly believe Billy is
great!" She laughed at the artless admission. "Well, you think Conrad
is great," finished Susan, defending herself.
"Yes, sometimes I wish he wasn't--yet," Anna said, sighing. "I never
cooked a meal for him, or had to mend his shirts!" she added with a
rueful laugh. "But, Sue, shall you be content to have Billy slave as he
is slaving now," she presently went on, "right on into middle-age?"
"He'll always slave at something," Susan said, cheerfully, "but that's
another funny thing about all this fuss--the boys were simply WILD with
enthusiasm when they heard about old Wallace and the 'Protest,' trust
Clem for that! And Clem assured me seriously that they'd have him Mayor
of San Francisco yet!--However," she laughed, "that's way ahead! But
next year Billy is going east for two months, to study the situation in
different cities, and if he makes up his mind to go, a newspaper
syndicate has offered him enough money, for six articles on the
subject, to pay his expenses! So, if your angel mother really will come
here and live with the babies, and all goes well, I'm going, too!"
"Mother would do anything for you," Anna said, "she loves you for
yourself, and sometimes I think that she loves you for--for Jo, you
know, too! She's so proud of you, Sue---"
"Well, if I'm ever anything to be proud of, she well may be!" smiled
Susan, "for, of all the influences of my life--a sentence from a talk
with her stands out clearest! I was moping in the kitchen one day, I
forget what the especial grievance was, but I remember her saying that
the best of life was service--that any life's happiness may be measured
by how much it serves!"
Anna considered it, frowning.
"True enough of her life, Sue!"
"True of us all! Georgie, and Alfie, and Virginia! And Mary Lou,--did
you know that they had a little girl? And Mary Lou just divides her
capacity for adoration into two parts, one for Ferd and one for
Marie-Louise!"
"Well, you're a delicious old theorist, Sue! But somehow you believe in
yourself, and you always do me good!" Anna said laughing. "I share with
Mother the conviction that you're rather uncommon--one watches you to
see what's next!"
"Putting this child in her crib is next, now," said Susan flushing, a
little embarrassed. She lowered Josephine carefully on the little
pillow. "Best--girl--her--mudder--ever--did--HAB!" said Susan tenderly
as the transfer was accomplished. "Come on, Nance!" she whispered,
"we'll go down and see what Bill is doing."
So they went down, to add a score of last touches to the orderly,
homelike rooms, to cut grape-fruit and taste cranberry sauce, to fill
vases with chrysanthemums and ferns, and count chairs for the long
table.
"This is fun!" said Susan to her husband, as she filled little dishes
with nuts and raisins in the pantry and arranged crackers on a plate.
"You bet your life it's fun!" agreed Billy, pausing in the act of
opening a jar of olives. "You look so pretty in that dress, Sue," he
went on, contentedly, "and the kids are so good, and it seems dandy to
be able to have the family all here! We didn't see this coming when we
married on less than a hundred a month, did we?"
He put his arm about her, they stood looking out of the window together.
"We did not! And when you were ill, Billy--and sitting up nights with
Mart's croup!" Susan smiled reminiscently.
"And the Thanksgiving Day the milk-bill came in for five months--when
we thought we'd been paying it!"
"We've been through some TIMES, Bill! But isn't it wonderful to--to do
it all together--to be married?"
"You bet your life it's wonderful," agreed the unpoetic William.
"It's the loveliest thing in the world," his wife said dreamily. She
tightened his arm about her and spoke half aloud, as if to herself. "It
IS the Great Adventure!" said Susan.