After dinner that night, in the living room the two older children studied
their lessons and Edith sat mending a pair of rompers for little Tad.
Presently Roger came out from his den with the evening paper in his hand
and sat down close beside her. He did this conscientiously almost every
evening. With a sigh he opened his paper to read, again there was silence
in the room, and in this silence Roger's mind roamed far away across the
sea.
For the front page of his paper was filled with the usual headlines,
tidings which a year before would have made a man's heart jump into his
throat, but which were getting commonplace now. Dead and wounded by the
thousands, famine, bombs and shrapnel, hideous atrocities, submarines and
floating mines, words once remote but now familiar, always there on the
front page and penetrating into his soul, becoming a part of Roger Gale, so
that never again when the war was done would he be the same man he was
before. For he had forever lost his faith in the sanity and steadiness of
the great mind of humanity. Roger had thought of mankind as mature, but
there had come to him of late the same feeling he had had before in the
bosom of his family. Mankind had suddenly unmasked and shown itself for
what it was--still only a precocious child, with a terrible precocity. For
its growth had been one sided. Its strength was growing at a speed
breathless and astounding. But its vision and its poise, its sense of human
justice, of kindliness and tolerance and of generous brotherly love, these
had been neglected and were being left behind. Vaguely he thought of its
ships of steel, its railroads and its flaming mills, its miracles, its
prodigies. And the picture rose in his mind of a child, standing there of
giant's size with dangerous playthings in its hands, and boastfully
declaring,
"I can thunder over the earth, dive in the ocean, soar on the clouds! I can
shiver to atoms a mountain, I can drench whole lands with blood! I can look
up and laugh at God!"
And Roger frowned as he read the news. What strange new century lay ahead?
What convulsing throes of change? What was in store for his children?
Tighter set his heavy jaw.
"It shall be good," he told himself with a grim determination. "For them
there shall be better things. Something great and splendid shall come out
of it at last. They will look back upon this time as I look on the French
Revolution."
He tried to peer into that world ahead, dazzling, distant as the sun. But
then with a sigh he returned to the news, and little by little his mind
again was gripped and held by the most compelling of all appeals so far
revealed in humanity's growth, the appeal of war to the mind of a man. He
frowned as he read, but he read on. Why didn't England send over more men?
The clock struck nine.
"Now, George. Now, Elizabeth," Edith said. With the usual delay and
reluctance the children brought their work to an end, kissed their mother
and went up to bed. And Edith continued sewing. Presently she smiled to
herself. Little Tad had been so droll that day.
On the third page of his paper, Roger's glance was arrested by a full
column story concerning Deborah's meeting that night. And as in a long
interview he read here in the public print the same things she had told him
at supper, he felt a little glow of pride. Yes, this daughter of his was a
wonderful woman, living a big useful life, taking a leading part in work
which would certainly brighten the lives of millions of children still
unborn. Again he felt the tonic of it. Here was a glimmer of hope in the
world, here was an antidote to war. He finished the column and glanced up.
Edith was still sewing. He thought of her plan to sell all she possessed in
order to put her children back in their expensive schools uptown.
"Why can't she save her money?" he thought. "God knows there's little
enough of it left. But I can't tell her that. If I do she'll sell
everything, hand me the cash and tell me she's sorry to be such a burden.
She'll sit like a thundercloud in my house."
No, he could say nothing to stop her. And over the top of his paper her
father shot a look at her of keen exasperation. Why risk everything she had
to get these needless frills and fads? Why must she cram her life so full
of petty plans and worries and titty-tatty little jobs? For the Lord's
sake, leave their clothes alone! And why these careful little rules for
every minute of their day, for their washing, their dressing, their eating,
their napping, their play and the very air they breathed! He crumpled his
paper impatiently. She was always talking of being old-fashioned. Well
then, why not be that way? Let her live as her grandmother had, up there in
the mountain farmhouse. _She_ had not been so particular. With one hired
girl she had thought herself lucky. And not only had she cooked and sewed,
but she had spun and woven too, had churned and made cheese and pickles and
jam and quilts and even mattresses. Once in two months she had cut Roger's
hair, and the rest of the time she had let him alone, except for something
really worth while--a broken arm, for example, or church. She had stuck to
the essentials!... But Edith was not old-fashioned, nor was she alive to
this modern age. In short, she was neither here nor there!
Then from the nursery above, her smallest boy was heard to cry. With a
little sigh of weariness, quickly she rose and went upstairs, and a few
moments later to Roger's ears came a low, sweet, soothing lullaby. Years
ago Edith had asked him to teach her some of his mother's cradle songs. And
the one which she was singing to-night was a song he had heard when he was
small, when the mountain storms had shrieked and beat upon the rattling old
house and he had been frightened and had cried out and his mother had come
to his bed in the dark. He felt as though she were near him now. And as he
listened to the song, from the deep well of sentiment which was a part of
Roger Gale rose memories that changed his mood, and with it his sense of
proportions.
Here was motherhood of the genuine kind, not orating in Cooper Union in the
name of every child in New York, but crooning low and tenderly, soothing
one little child to sleep, one of the five she herself had borne, in agony,
without complaint. How Edith had slaved and sacrificed, how bravely she had
rallied after the death of her husband. He remembered her a few hours ago
on the bed upstairs, spent and in anguish, sobbing, alone. And remorse came
over him. Deborah's talk at dinner had twisted his thinking, he told
himself. Well, that was Deborah's way of life. She had her enormous family
and Edith had her small one, and in this hell of misery which war was
spreading over the earth each mother was up in arms for her brood. And, by
George, of the two he didn't know but that he preferred his own flesh and
blood. All very noble, Miss Deborah, and very dramatic, to open your arms
to all the children under the moon and get your name in the papers. But
there was something pretty fine in just sitting at home and singing to one.
"All right, little mother, you go straight ahead. This is war and panic and
hard times. You're perfectly right to look after your own."
He would show Edith he did not begrudge her this use of her small
property. And more than that, he would do what he could to take her out of
her loneliness. How about reading aloud to her? He had been a capital
reader, during Judith's lifetime, for he had always enjoyed it so. Roger
rose and went to his shelves and began to look over the volumes there.
Perhaps a book of travel.... Stoddard's "Lectures on Japan."
Meanwhile Edith came into the room, sat down and took up her sewing. As she
did so he turned and glanced at her, and she smiled brightly back at him.
Yes, he thought with a genial glow, from this night on he would do his
part. He came back to his chair with a book in his hand, prepared to start
on his new course.
"Father," she said quietly. Her eyes were on the work in her lap.
"Yes, my child, what is it?"
"It's about John," she answered. And with a movement of alarm he looked at
his daughter intently.
"What's the matter with John?" he inquired.
"He has tuberculosis," she said.
"He has no such thing!" her father retorted. "John has Pott's Disease of
the spine!"
"Yes, I know he has," she replied. "And I'm sorry for him, poor lad. But in
the last year," she added, "certain complications have come. And now he's
tubercular as well."
"How do you know? He doesn't cough--his lungs are sound as yours or mine!"
"No, it's--" Edith pursed her lips. "It's different," she said softly.
"Who told you?" he demanded.
"Not Deborah," was the quick response. "She knew it, I'm certain, for I
find that she's been having Mrs. Neale, the woman who comes in to wash, do
John's things in a separate tub. I found her doing it yesterday, and she
told me what Deborah had said."
"It's the first I'd heard of it," Roger put in.
"I know it is," she answered. "For if you'd heard of it before, I don't
believe you'd have been as ready as Deborah was, apparently, to risk
infecting the children here." Edith's voice was gentle, slow and
relentless. There was still a reflection in her eyes of the tenderness
which had been there as she had soothed her child to sleep. "As time goes
on, John is bound to get worse. The risk will be greater every week."
"Oh, pshaw!" cried her father. "No such thing! You're just scaring yourself
over nothing at all!"
"Doctor Lake didn't think I was." Lake was the big child specialist in
whose care Edith's children had been for years. "I talked to him to-day on
the telephone, and he said we should get John out of the house."
Roger heartily damned Doctor Lake!
"It's easy to find a good home for the boy," Edith went on quietly, "close
by, if you like--in some respectable family that will be only too thankful
to take in a boarder."
"How about the danger to that family's children?" Roger asked malignantly.
"Very well, father, do as you please. Take any risk you want to."
"I'm taking no risk," he retorted. "If there were any risk they would have
told me--Allan and Deborah would, I mean."
"They wouldn't!" burst from Edith with a vehemence which startled him.
"They'd take the same risk for my children they would for any street urchin
in town! All children are the same in their eyes--and if you feel as they
do--"
"I don't feel as they do!"
"Don't you? Then I'm telling you that Doctor Lake said there was very
serious risk--every day this boy remains in the house!" Roger rose angrily
from his chair:
"So you want me to turn him out! To-night!"
"No, I want you to wait a few days--until we can find him a decent home."
"All right, I won't do it!"
"Very well, father--it's your house, not mine."
For a few moments longer she sat at her sewing, while her father walked the
floor. Then abruptly she rose, her eyes brimming with tears, and left the
room. And he heard a sob as she went upstairs.
"Now she'll shut herself up with her children," he reflected savagely, "and
hold the fort till I come to terms!" Rather than risk a hair on their
heads, Edith would turn the whole world out of doors! He thought of Deborah
and he groaned. She would have to be told of this; and when she was, what a
row there would be! For Johnny was one of _her_ family. He glanced at the
clock. She'd be coming home soon. Should he tell her? Not to-night! Just
for one evening he'd had enough!
He picked up the book he had meant to read--Stoddard's "Lectures on Japan."
And Roger snorted wrathfully. By George, how _he'd_ like to go to Japan--or
to darkest Africa! Anywhere!