Charley was away when Lottie came home in February, following that
historic hysteric November. Charley was in Cincinnati, Ohio, dancing
with the Krisiloff Russian ballet. They were playing Cincinnati all
that week, and the future bookings included Columbus, Cleveland,
Toledo, Akron. Charley wrote that they would be back in Chicago for two
weeks at the end of March, showing one week at the Palace and one at
the Majestic.
"... And what's all this," she wrote Lottie, "about your having brought
back a French war orphan? There never was such a gal for orphans.
Though I must say you did pretty well with Jeannette. Mother wrote me
about her wedding. But this orphan sounds so young. And a girl, too.
I'm disappointed. While you were about it it seems to me you might have
picked a gentleman orphan. We certainly need some men in our family.
Send me a picture, won't you? I hope she isn't one of those awfully
brune French babies that look a mixture of Italian and Yiddish and
Creole. In any case I'm going to call her Coot. Are you really going
to adopt her? That would be nice, but mad. Did Grandmother raise an
awful row? I'm sorry she's feeling no better. Mother wrote you have a
trained nurse now...."
Lottie's homecoming had been a subdued affair. She had slipped back
into the family life of the old house on Prairie Avenue as if those
months of horror and exaltation and hardship had never been. But there
was a difference. Lottie was the head of the household now.
Mrs. Carrie Payson lay upstairs in the second-floor front bedroom, a
strangely flat outline beneath the covers of the great walnut bed. She
made a bad patient. The eyes in the pointed sallow face were never
still. The new nurse said, almost automatically now, "Don't try to
talk, Mrs. Payson. You want to save your strength."
"Strength! How can I ever get my strength lying here! I never stayed in
bed. I'll get up to-morrow, doctor or no doctor. Everything's going to
rack and ruin. I engaged the painters for the first of March. There's
repairing to do on everything in the spring. Did they send in the bill
for fixing the shed?"
But when next day came she threatened to get up to-morrow. And next
day. Her will still burned, indomitable, but the heart refused to do
its bidding. The thing they called rheumatism had leaped and struck
deep with claws and fangs, following a series of disturbing events.
Mrs. Payson had looked upon the Kemp's removal from the Hyde Park
apartment to the small Fifty-third Street flat as a family disgrace.
The Thrifts, she said, had always gone forward, never back. She tried
vainly to shake Henry's determination not to take advantage of the
roominess of the Prairie Avenue house. Henry had remained firm. He
had a position as manager of the china and glass department in a big
wholesale house whose specialty was the complete equipment of hotels,
restaurants, and country clubs. His salary was less than one-fourth
of what his income had been in the old days. He said it would have
to do. The Hyde Park Boulevard furnishings fitted strangely into the
cheap-woodwork-and-wall-paper background of the new apartment. Belle
refused to part with any of them. She said that some day they would be
back where they belonged. What she could not use she stored in the top
floor of her mother's house. By early spring she was white-enamelling
almost happily, and dickering with the dour landlord as to his possible
share of the expense of plain plaster in the living room. She had the
gift of making a house habitable in spite of herself.
The Friday night family dinners persisted. Mrs. Payson even continued
to administer business advice to the long-suffering Henry. Things
that had seemed unbearable in prospect now adjusted themselves well
enough. And then Charley had horrified them all by discarding the black
uniform of a Shields' employee for the chiffon and fleshings of the
Krisiloff Ballet. Belle and even Henry opposed it from the first moment
of surprise and disapproval, but Mrs. Carrie Payson fought it like a
tigress. They had all thought she would return to Shields'. But she had
announced, calmly, her decision never to return. "Go back? Why should I
go back there? The thought makes me ill."
Her father and mother had received this with amazement. "But Charley,
you were promoted just last week. You said you liked it. Let me tell
you three thousand a year isn't to be sneezed at by a kid of twenty. In
another five----"
"Yes, I know. In another five I'll be earning five thousand. I'll be
twenty-five then. And in another five I'll be earning ten, and I'll
be thirty. And in another five and another five and another five!...
And then I'll colour my hair a beautiful raspberry shade, too, just
like Healy, and wear imported black charmeuse and maybe my pearls will
be real and my manicure grand and glittering, and while I shan't call
the stock-girls 'girlie,' I'll have that hard finish. You get it in
business--if you're in it for business."
"Well, what _were_ you in it for?"
"For Jesse, I suppose."
They were at dinner at home. Belle left the table, weeping. Charley
and her father went on with their meal and their discussion like two
men, though Charley did become a little dramatic toward the end.
Later Belle, overcome by curiosity at the sound of their low-voiced
conversation, crept back, red-eyed, to know the rest.
Henry Kemp, wise enough in the ways of women-folk, as well he might
be--the one man in that family of women--groped bewildered for a motive
in Charley's sudden revolt. "But you liked it well enough, Charley. You
liked it real well. You said so. You seemed to be getting a lot of fun
out of it. Maybe something's happened down there. Anything wrong?"
"Not a thing, Dad. I'm not interested in it any more. It's just
that--it's just that--well, you see, Jesse furnished enough colour and
light and poetry for both of us. When I say poetry I don't mean verses
on paper. I mean rhythm and motion and joy. Does that sound silly to
you?"
"Why no, Charley, it doesn't sound silly. I guess maybe I get what you
mean, sort of."
"Well--" Then it was that Belle came creeping back into the room,
sniffling. Charley looked up at her calm-eyed. "Mother, I'd like to
have you understand this, too. I've been thinking about it quite a lot.
I don't want you to imagine I'm just popping off, suddenly."
"Off!" Belle snatched at the word.
Charley nodded. "You see I've got to have colour and motion and life.
And beauty. You don't find them at Shields'. But before Jesse--went--I
knew I could hit it off beautifully down there and that he'd furnish
me with enough of the other thing. One of us had to buckle down, and I
was the one. I wanted to be. We were both going to be married and free
at the same time. The little house in Hubbard Woods was there to come
to, every day or once a week. It was going to be every day for me. But
a man like Jesse can't write--couldn't write--his kind of stuff without
feeling free to come and go. So there I was going to be. And I'd have
my job, and some babies in between.... Well, there's nothing in it for
me now. Plodding away. It's ridiculous. What for! Oh, it's interesting
enough. It's all right if.... I want a change. Dancing! Krisiloff's
going out with his company. He's got forty-two solid weeks booked. I'm
going with them. He's going to let me do the Gypsy Beggar dance alone."
She pushed her plate away, got up from the table. "It'll be good to
dance again." She raised her arms high above her head. "'Can I show you
something in blouses, madam?' Ugh!"
Mrs. Payson, when she heard of it, was aroused to a point
that alarmed them all. "A grandchild of mine--Isaac Thrift's
great-granddaughter--dancing around the country on the stage! What did
I tell you, Belle! Haven't I always told you! But no, she had to take
dancing lessons. Esthetic dancing. Esthetic! I'd like to know what's
esthetic about a lot of dirty Russians slapping about in their bare
feet. I won't have it. I won't have it. Colour, huh? Life and beauty!
I'd show her colour if I were you. A spanking--that's what she needs.
That'd show her a little life and colour. She shan't go. Hear me!"
When Charley refused to discuss it with her grandmother Mrs. Payson
forbade her the house. The excitement had given her tremendous energy.
She stamped about the house and down the street, scorning the electric.
Charley joined the Krisiloffs in August. Her letters home omitted many
details that would have justified Mrs. Payson in the stand she had
taken. But Charley was only slightly disgusted and often amused at
the manners and morals of the Krisiloffs. She hated the stuffy hotels
and the uninviting food but loved exploring the towns. Audiences in
medium-sized Middle West towns were rather startled by the fury and
fire which she flung into the Gypsy Beggar dance. Her costume of satin
breeches and chiffon shirt was an ingenious imitation of a street
beggar's picturesque rags and tatters. As she finished her dance, and
flung herself on her knees, holding out her tambourine for alms, the
audiences would stare at her uncomfortably, shifting in their seats,
so haggard and piteous and feverish was her appeal. But always there
was a crash of applause, sharp and spontaneous. She had some unpleasant
moments with other women of the company who were jealous of the favour
with which her dance was received.
When the rest of the company was sleeping, or eating, or cooking messes
over furtive alcohol stoves in hotel bedrooms, Charley was prowling
about book-shops, or walking in the town's outskirts, or getting a
quiet private enjoyment out of its main street. She missed Lottie. She
often wanted to write her many of the things that the other members of
the family would not have understood. In the life and colour and beauty
she had craved she had found, as well, much drudgery, and sordidness
and hardship. But she loved the dancing. The shifting from town to
town, from theatre to theatre, numbed her pain. She caught herself
looking at beauty through Jesse Dick's eyes. In her Cincinnati letter
to Lottie she dismissed dancing in ten words and devoted three pages to
a description of the Nürnberg quality of the turreted buildings on the
hill overlooking the river, from the park. The money she earned, aside
from that which she needed for her own actual wants, she sent regularly
to the Red Cross. Before she had left, "I suppose I could be cutting
sandwiches," she had said, "and dancing with the kids passing through
Chicago; or driving an emergency car. I'd rather not. There are fifty
girls to every job of that kind."
Contrary to Aunt Charlotte's prediction, Jeannette's Nebraska sailor
had not become Jeannette's Nebraska husband until after the armistice.
She was married at Christmas and left for the West with him. The
wedding was held in the Prairie Avenue house. It turned out to be
rather a grim affair, in spite of Jeannette's high spirits and her
Bohemian relatives and the post-war reaction and the very good supper
provided by Mrs. Payson. For Belle and Henry thought of Charley; and
Mrs. Payson thought of Lottie; and Aunt Charlotte thought of both, and
of the girl of sixty years ago. And Jeannette said bluntly: "You look
as if it was a funeral instead of a wedding." She herself was a little
terrified at the thought of this great unknown prairie land to which
she was going, with her smart fur coat and her tricotine dress and her
silk stockings and gray kid shoes. As well she might be.
After it was over, an unnatural quiet settled down upon the house.
The two old women told each other that it was a blessed relief after
the flurry and fuss of the wedding, but looked at each other rather
fearfully during the long evenings and awaited Lottie's return with
such passionate eagerness as neither would have admitted to the other.
They expected her to pop in, somehow, the day after the armistice.
"Well, Lottie'll be home now," Mrs. Payson would say, "most any day."
She took to watching for the postman, as she used to watch at the
parlour window for Lottie on the rare occasions when she was late.
When he failed to appear at what she considered the proper time she
would fume and fuss. Then, at his ring, she would whisk into the front
vestibule with surprising agility and, poking her head out of the door,
berate him.
"You're getting later and later, Mail Man. Yesterday it was nine
o'clock. To-day it's almost half-past."
Mail Man was a chromic individual, his grayish hair blending into the
grayish uniform above which his grayish face rose almost indefinably.
He was lopsided from much service. "Well, everything's late these
days, M'z. Payson. Since the war we haven't had any regular----"
"Oh, the war! You make me tired with your war. The war's over!"
Mail Man did not defend himself further. Mail men have that henpecked
look by virtue of their calling which lays them open to tirade and
abuse from every disappointed sweetheart, housemaid, daughter, wife,
and mother.
"Expecting a letter from Miss Lottie, I suppose?"
"Yes. Have you----"
"Don't see it here this morning, M'z. Payson. Might be in on the eleven
o'clock mail. Everything's late these days since the war."
They confidently expected her in December. In December she wrote that
it would be January. The letter was postmarked Paris. In January she
set the date of her homecoming for February and it was that letter
which contained the astounding news of the impending French orphan.
The two old women stared at each other, their mouths open ludicrously,
their eyes wide. Mrs. Payson had read the letter aloud to Aunt
Charlotte there in the living room.
"A French child--a French orphan." It was then that Mrs. Payson had
looked up, her face as blank of expression as that of a dead fish. She
plunged back into the letter, holding the page away from her as though
distance would change the meaning of the black letters on the white
flimsy page.
"Well," said Aunt Charlotte, the first to recover, "that'll be kind of
nice, now Jeannette's gone and all. Young folks around the house again.
It's been kind of spooky. French child, h'm? That'll be odd. I used to
know some French. Had it, when I was a girl, at Miss Rapp's school,
across the river. Remember Miss Rapp's s----"
"Charlotte Thrift, you're crazy! So's Lottie, crazy. A French orphan!"
Another dart at the letter--"Why, it's a baby--a French baby. One of
those war babies, I'll be bound.... Where's Belle? I'll get Belle. I'll
telephone Belle." Later, at the telephone--"Yes, I tell you that's what
it says. A French baby and she's bringing it home. Well, come here and
read it for yourself then. I guess I can read. You telephone Henry
right away, d'you hear! You tell him to telegraph her, or cable her, or
whatever it is, that she can't bring any French baby here. The idea!
Why! Girls nowdays! Look at Charley.... Excited? Don't you tell me not
to be excited, Belle Payson! I guess you'd be excited----"
Henry cabled. He agreed with Mother Payson that it was a little too
much. Let the French take care of their own orphans. America'd furnish
the money but no wet-nursing.
Winnie Steppler had returned from France in December. To her Mrs.
Payson appealed for information. "Did you know anything about this
crazy notion of Lottie's? Did she say anything to you when you were
together there?"
"Yes, indeed. I saw her."
"Saw who?"
"The baby. The French baby. She's awfully cute. Fair.... No, they're
not all dark, you know.... Well, now, Mrs. Payson, I wouldn't say that.
It's a nice humane thing to do, I think. All those poor little things
left fatherless. Lots of Americans are bringing home.... You have?
Well, I don't think even that will change her now. She seems to have
her mind made up. Maybe when you see it----"
"But where'd she get it? Where did she find it? How did she happen----"
Winnie Steppler explained. "Well, you know, after St. Mihiel, when the
Germans were retreating and our boys were advancing, the Germans took
prisoner all the young French men and women--all they could lay hands
on. Regular slavery. They took parents from their children, and all.
This baby was found in a little town called Thiaucourt, all alone,
in a kind of cellar. They took care of her, and sent her back to the
American relief."
"But the father and mother? They may be alive, looking for her."
"The father was killed. That's proved. The mother died----"
It was at this point that the accumulation of family eccentricities
proved too much for Mrs. Payson. The "faint feeling" mushroomed into a
full-sized faint from which they thought she would never recover. Aunt
Charlotte had come upon her younger sister seated saggingly in a chair
in the living room. Her face was livid. She was breathing stertorously.
They put her to bed. For a long time she did not regain consciousness.
But almost immediately on doing so she tried to get up.
"Well! I'm not staying in bed. What's the matter! What's the matter!
Don't you think you can keep me in bed."
Followed another attack. The doctor said that a third would probably
prove the last. So she stayed in bed now, rebellious still, and
indomitable. One could not but admire the will that still burned so
bright in the charred ruin of the body.
So it was a subdued homecoming that Lottie met. When she stepped off
the train at the Twelfth Street station with an unmistakable bundle
in her arms, Belle and Henry kissed her across the bundle and said,
almost simultaneously, "Mother's been quite sick, Lottie. You can't
keep her at the house, you know."
"Mother sick? How sick?"
They told her. And again, "You see, there can't be a baby in the house."
"Oh, yes," said Lottie, not in argument, but almost amusedly, as though
it were too ridiculous to argue. "Don't you want to see her?"
"Yes," said Belle, nervously. And "W-what's its name?" asked Henry.
"I think Claire would be nice, don't you?" Lottie turned back the flap
of the downy coverlet and Claire blinked up at them rosily and caught
this unguarded opportunity to shoot a wanton fist in the air.
"Why, say, she's a cute little tyke," said Henry, and jiggled her
chin, and caught the velvet fist. "Claire, huh? That isn't so terribly
French."
Belle gave a gasp. "Why, Lottie, she's so little! She's just a tiny
baby! Almost new. You must be crazy. Mother's too sick to have----"
Lottie replaced the flap and captured the waving fist expertly, tucking
it back into warmth. "She's not little. She's really large for her age.
Those are all my bags, Henry, and things. There's a frightful lot of
them. And here's my trunk check. Perhaps you'd better tend to them.
Here, I'll take this, and that. Give them to the boy. Perhaps Belle
and I had better go ahead in a taxi while you straighten out the mess."
She was calm, alert, smiling. Henry thought she looked handsome, and
told her so. "War certainly agrees with you, Lottie. Gosh, you look
great. Doesn't she, Belle? Darned pretty, if you ask me, Lot."
Belle, eyeing Lottie's clear fine skin, and the vital line of her
shoulders and back and a certain set of the head, and a look that was
at once peaceful and triumphant, nodded in agreement, vaguely puzzled.
"I thought you'd be a wreck.... What do you think of Charley?... Oh,
well, and now mother. And here you come complicating things still more.
How did you happen to do such a crazy thing, Lottie?"
"I'll tell you all about it on the way home." Later, in the taxi, the
heaving bundle fitting graciously into the hollow of her arm: "Well,
you know, after St. Mihiel, when the Germans were retreating and
retreating and our boys were advancing, the Germans took with them in
their retreat all the young men and young women they could lay their
hands on. Prisoners, you know. They meant to use them for work. Well,
often, parents were taken from their children. Babies were left alone.
When our men got to Thiaucourt--that's a little town of about three
hundred--in September, it was a deserted ruined heap of stone. They
were right up on the retreat. And there, in what had been a kitchen,
without any roof to it, was a baby. They sent her back, of course, to
us."
"Yes, but Lottie, perhaps the----"
"No. The father was killed in the war. They traced the mother. She died
in November. I adopted her legally----"
"You didn't!"
"But I did."
"Claire--what?"
Lottie looked down at the bundle; squeezed it with a gentle pressure.
"Claire Payson, I suppose, now."
CHAPTER XVIII
The Girls all came to see the baby. They exclaimed and cooed and
_ah_'d and _oh_'d. "Of course it's wonderful and all. But it
is a big responsibility, Lottie. How in the world did you happen----"
"Well, you know, after St. Mihiel, when the Germans were retreating and
our boys were advancing----"
She was asked to lecture before some of the women's clubs, but declined.
Beck Schaefer, grown a trifle too plump now in the rôle of Mrs. Sam
Butler, insisted on holding the struggling Claire. "I never can tell
whether I like a baby or not until I've held it--her. 'Scuse. Though
this one certainly is a darling. Come to your Aunt Beck, sweetie. Oh,
Lottie! Look at her! She put her little hand right up on my cheek!
S'e is a tunnin' ol' sin, izzen s'e!" This last addressed directly to
the object of her admiration. "Sam and I want to adopt a baby. That's
what comes of marrying late. Though I suppose you heard about Celia.
Imagine! But he looks just like Orville. Good thing he's a boy. I
don't see why you didn't take a boy, while you were about it. Though,
after all, when you've brought up a girl you know where she is, but a
boy! Well! They leave you and then where are you! They don't even thank
you for your trouble. And girls are such fun to dress. Oh, _what_
did you think of Ben Gartz marrying a chorus girl! Didn't you nearly
die! I saw her in the Pompeiian Room with him one night after the
theatre. She's a common looking little thing and young enough to be his
daughter. She was ordering things under glass. Poor Ben. He was awfully
sweet on you, Lottie, at one time. What happened, anyway?"
Against the doctor's orders and the nurse's advice and manœuverings,
Mrs. Payson had insisted on seeing the baby immediately on Lottie's
entering the house. They prepared Lottie. "It can't be much worse for
her to see you--and the baby--now than not to see you. She's so worked
up that we can't do anything with her anyway. But don't argue; and
don't oppose her in anything. Lie, if you have to, about sending the
baby away."
"Away! Oh! no!"
"But Lottie, you don't understand how sick she is. Any shock might----"
Lottie had scarcely divested herself of hat and wraps when she entered
her mother's bedroom, the child in her arms. Mrs. Payson's eyes
were on the door--had been from the moment she heard the flurry of
homecoming downstairs. As Lottie stood in the doorway a moment the sick
woman's eyes dilated. She made as though to sit up. The nurse took the
child from Lottie as she bent over to kiss her mother. Then, suddenly,
she dropped to her knees at the side of the bed. "Oh, mama, it's so
good to be home." She took one of the flaccid hands in her own firm
vital grasp.
"H'm. Well, that's some good come of your leaving, anyway. You look
handsome, Lottie. How've you got your hair done?"
"Just as I always had it, mama."
"Your face looks fuller, somehow. Let's see the young one."
The nurse turned and leaned over the bed. But at this final test of her
good nature Claire, travel worn, bewildered, hungry, failed them. She
opened wide her mouth, lurched in muscular rebellion, and emitted a
series of ear-piercing screams against the world; against this strange
person in white who held her; against that which stared at her from the
bed.
"There!" exclaimed Mrs. Payson. "Take it away. I knew it. Don't you
think for one minute I'm going to have any foreign baby screaming
around this house, sick as I am. Not for a minute. I hope you're
satisfied, Lottie. Running an orphan asylum in this house. Well, I've
still got something to say."
But strangely enough she had little to say, after that. She showed
small interest in the newcomer and they kept the baby out of the sick
room. The little world of her bedside interested the sick woman more.
She fancied them all in league against her. She would call Lottie to
her bedside and send the nurse out of the room on some pretext or other
that deceived no one.
"Lottie, come here. Listen. That woman has got to go. Why, she won't
let me get up! I'm perfectly well."
"But perhaps you haven't quite got your strength, mama. You know it
takes a while."
"I'll never get my strength back lying here. Was I ever a person to
stay in bed?"
"No, mama. You've always been wonderful."
"A lot of thanks I've got for it, too. Now, Lottie, you see that I
get another doctor. This man's a fool. He doesn't understand my case.
Palavering young hand-holder, that's what he is."
"Don't you think you'd better try him a little longer? He hasn't had
time, really."
"Time! I've been three mortal months in this bed. You're like all the
rest of them. Glad if I died. Well, I'm not going to please you just
yet. You'll see me up to-morrow, early."
They had heard this threat so regularly and so often that they scarcely
heeded it now; or, if they did, only to say, soothingly, "We'll see how
you feel by to-morrow, shall we?"
So that when, finally, she made good her threat the nurse came in early
one morning from where she slept in the alcove just off the big front
bedroom to find her half-lying, half-sitting in the big chair by the
window. She had got up stealthily, had even fumbled about in bureau
and closet for the clothes she had not worn in months. In one hand she
grasped her corsets. She had actually meant to put them on as she had
done every morning before her illness, regarding corsetless kimonoed
women with contempt. She must have dragged herself up to the chair by
an almost super-human effort of will. So they found her. A born ruler,
defying them all to the last.
Charley came home for the funeral. She was not to rejoin the Krisiloff
company until its arrival in Chicago for the two-weeks' engagement
there. "If ever," said Henry Kemp privately to Lottie. "I don't think
she's so crazy about this trouping any more. You ought to have heard
her talking about the fresh eggs at breakfast this morning. I asked
her what she'd been eating on the road and she said, 'Vintage oofs.'"
Mrs. Carrie Payson's funeral proved an enlightening thing. There came
to it a queer hodge-podge of people; representatives of Chicago's South
Side old families who had not set foot in the Prairie Avenue house
in half a century; real estate men who had known her in the days of
her early business career; Brosch, the carpenter and contractor, with
whom she had bickered and bartered for years; some of the Polish and
Italian tenants from over Eighteenth Street way; women in shawls of
whom Lottie had never heard, and who owed Mrs. Payson some unnamed debt
of gratitude. Lottie wondered if she had ever really understood her
mother; if the indomitability that amounted almost to ruthlessness had
not been, after all, a finer quality than a certain fluid element in
herself, in Aunt Charlotte, in Charley, which had handicapped them all.
Aunt Charlotte mourned her sister sincerely; seemed even to miss her
tart-tongued goading. No one to find fault with her clothes, her
habits, her ideas, her conversation. Lottie humoured her outrageously.
The household found itself buying as Mrs. Payson had bought; thinking
as she had thought; regulating its hours as they had been regulated
for her needs. Her personality was too powerful to fade so soon after
the corporeal being had gone.
More easily than any of them Aunt Charlotte had accepted the advent
of the French baby. To her the sound and sight of a baby in the old
Prairie Avenue house seemed an accustomed and natural thing. She had
a way of mixing names, bewilderingly. Often as not she called Claire
"Lottie," or Charley "Claire." She clapped her hands at the baby and
wagged her head at her tremulously, and said, "No, no, no! Auntie
punish!" and "Come to Auntie Charlotte," exactly as she had done forty
years before to Belle. Once she put the child down on the floor for a
moment and Claire began to wriggle her way down the faded green stream
of the parlor carpet river, and to poke a finger into the sails of the
dim old ships and floral garlands, just as Lottie and Belle had done
long ago.
There was much talk of selling the old house; but it never seemed to
amount to more than talk. In proper time Claire was cutting her teeth
and soothing her hot swollen gums on the hard surface of Ole Bull's
arms, just as Belle and Lottie had done before her. This only, of
course, when Aunt Charlotte was holding her. Lottie and Charley both
put down the practice as highly unhygienic.
"Fiddlesticks! You and Belle did it with all your teeth. And you're
living."
Charley came daily--often twice daily--to see the baby. She was
fascinated by her, made herself Claire's slave, insisted on trundling
her up and down Prairie Avenue in the smart English pram, though Lottie
said she much preferred to have her sleep or take her airing in the
back garden undisturbed. Charley and Aunt Charlotte opposed this.
Charley said, "Oh, but look how ducky she is in that bonnet! Everybody
stops to look at her, and then I brag. Yesterday I told a woman she was
mine. I expected her to say, 'And you so young!' but she didn't."
Aunt Charlotte said, "This new fad of never talking to babies and never
picking 'em up! It makes idiots of them. How can you ever expect them
to learn anything? Lie there like wooden images. Or else break their
hearts crying, when all they want is a little petting.... Her want her
ol' Auntie to p'ay wis her, yes her does, doesn't her?" to the baby.
Claire was one of those fair, rose-leaf babies, and possessed, at eight
months, of that indefinable thing known as style. She was the kind of
baby, Charley said, that looks dressy in a flannel nightgown. "Those
French gals," Charley explained. "Chic. That's what she's got. Haven't
you, _ma petite? Ma bébé_--or is it _mon bébé_, Lotta?
I get so mixed." Charley's was the American college girl's French,
verbless, scant, and faltering. She insisted on addressing Claire in
it, to that young person's wide-eyed delight. "_Tu est mon chou--ma
chou_--say, Lotta, you're a girl that's been around. Do they really
call each other cabbages over there?"
One of the big bedrooms on the second floor had been cleared and
refurnished as a nursery. Here, almost nightly at six o'clock, you
found Lottie, Charley, and Aunt Charlotte. The six o'clock bottle was a
vital affair. It just preceded sleeping time. It must be taken quietly
for some dietetic reason. The three women talked low, in the twilight,
watching Claire in her small bed. Claire lay rolling her eyes around at
them ecstatically as she pulled at the bottle. She exercised tremendous
suction and absorbed the bottle's contents almost magically unless
carefully watched.
This evening the talk centred on the child, as always. Trivial talk,
and yet vital.
"She's growing so I'll have to let her hems down again. And some new
stockings. The heels of those she has come under the middle of her
foot."
"Look at her Lotta! She's half asleep. There, now she's awake again and
pulling like mad. Swoons off and shows the whites of her eyes and then
remembers and goes at it again. Now she's--I never saw such a snoozey
old thing. Sleeps something chronic, all day and all night. What good
are you, anyway, h'm?"
Aunt Charlotte grew reminiscent. "Time you and Belle were babies you
wore long dresses--great long trailing bunchy things, and yards and
yards of petticoats--flannel and white. It used to take the girl hours
to do 'em up. Nowadays, seems the less they put on 'em the healthier
they are."
Charley was seated cross-legged on the floor, her back against a fat
old armchair. "How about the babies in France, Lotta? I suppose they're
still bundling them up over there. What did the Coot have on when they
found her, h'm?"
Lotta rose to take the empty bottle away, gently. Claire's eyes were
again showing two white slits.
Aunt Charlotte, in the window chair, leaned forward. Her tremulous
forefinger made circles, round and round, on her black-silk knee. "Yes,
Lotta. Now what did she have on, poor little forlorn lamb!"
"Why--I don't remember, Aunt Charlotte." She tucked the coverlet in
at the sides of the crib firmly. Claire was sound asleep now, her two
fists held high above her head, as a healthy baby sleeps. Lottie stood
a moment looking down at the child. The old, old virgin in the chair by
the window and the young girl seated cross-legged on the floor watched
her intently. Suddenly the quiet peaceful air of the nursery was
electric. The child made a little clucking sound with tongue and lips,
in her sleep. Charley sat forward, her eyes on Lottie.
"Lotta, do you remember my five--my five----" she broke off with a
half-sob. Then she threw up her head. "I'll have them yet."
It was then Aunt Charlotte put into brave words the thought that was
in the minds of the three women. "Don't you want to tell us about him,
Lottie? Don't you?"
For one instant terror leaped into Lottie's eyes as they went from Aunt
Charlotte's face to Charley's. But at what they saw there the terror
faded and in its place came relief--infinite relief. "Yes."
"Well, then, just you do."
But Lottie hesitated yet another moment, looking at them intently. "Did
you both know--all the time." Aunt Charlotte nodded. But Charley shook
her head slightly. "Not until just now, Lotta ... something in your
face as you stood there looking down at her."
Lottie came away from the crib, sat down in a low chair near Aunt
Charlotte. Charley scuttled crab-wise over to her across the floor and
settled there against her, her arm flung across Lottie's knee. The old
Prairie Avenue house was quiet, quiet. You could hear the child's
regular breathing. Lottie's voice was low, so that the baby's sleep
might not be disturbed, yet clear, that Aunt Charlotte might hear. They
could have gone downstairs, or to another chamber, but they did not.
The three women sat in the dim room.
"We met--I met him--in Paris, the very first week. He had gone over
there in the beginning as a correspondent. Then he had come all the
way back to America and had enlisted for service. He hated it, as
every intelligent man did. But he had to do it, he said. We--liked
each other right away. I'd never met a man like that before. I didn't
know there were any. Oh, I suppose I did know; but they had never come
within my range. He had only a second-lieutenancy. There was nothing
of the commander about him. He always said so. He used to say he had
never learned to 'snap into it' properly. You know what I mean? He was
thirty-seven. Winnie Steppler introduced us. She had known him in his
Chicago cub reporter days. He went to New York, later. Well, that first
week, when I was waiting to be sent out, he and Winnie and I--she met
me in Paris, you know, when I came--went everywhere together and it
was glorious. I can't tell you. Paris was being shelled but it refused
to be terrorised. The streets and the parks and the restaurants were
packed. You've no idea what it was, going about with him. He was like
a boy about things--simple things, I mean--a print in a window, or a
sauce in a restaurant, or a sunset on the Bois. We used to laugh at
nothing--foolish, wonderful, private jokes like those families have
that are funny to no one outside the family. The only other person
I'd ever known like that was a boy at school when I went to Armour. I
haven't seen him since I was eighteen, and he's an important person
now. But he had that same quality. They call it a sense of humour, I
suppose, but it's more than that. It's the most delightful thing in
the world, and if you have it you don't need anything else.... Four
months later he was wounded. Not badly. He was in the hospital for six
weeks. In that time I didn't see him. Then he went back into it but he
wasn't fit. We used to write regularly. I don't know how I can make you
understand how things were--things----"
Charley looked up at her. "I know what you mean. The--the state of mind
that people got into over there--nice people--nice girls. Is that what
you mean?"
"Yes. Do you know?"
"Well, I can imagine----"
"No, you can't. The world was rocking and we over there were
getting the full swing of it. It seemed that all the things we had
considered so vital and fundamental didn't matter any more. Life
didn't count. A city to-day was a brick-heap to-morrow. Night and day
were all mixed up. Terror and work. Exhaustion and hysteria. A lot
of us were girls--women, I mean--who had never known freedom. Not
license--freedom. Ordinary freedom of will, or intellect, or action.
Men, too, who had their noses to the grindstone for years. You know
there's a lot more to war than just killing, and winning battles, and
patching people up. It does something to you--something chemical and
transforming--after you've been in it. The reaction isn't always noble.
I'm just trying to explain what I mean. There were a lot of things
going around--especially among the older and more severe looking of us
girls. It's queer. There was one girl--she'd been a librarian in some
little town up in Michigan. She told me once that there were certain
books they kept in what they called 'The Inferno,' and only certain
people could have them. They weren't on the shelves, for the boys and
girls, or the general public. When she spoke of them she looked like a
librarian. Her mouth made a thin straight line. You could picture her
sitting in the library, at her desk, holding that pencil they use with
a funny little rubber stamp thing attached to it, and refusing to allow
some school-girl to take out 'Jennie Gerhardt.' She was discharged and
sent home for being what they called promiscuous.... I just wanted you
to know how things were.... He got three days' leave. Winnie Steppler
was in Paris at the time. I was to try for leave--I'd have gone A. W.
O. L. if I hadn't got it--and we three were to meet there. Winnie had
a little two-room flat across the river. She'd been there for almost a
year, you know. She made it her headquarters. The concierge knew me.
When I got there Robert was waiting for me. Winnie had left a note.
She had been called to Italy by her paper. I was to use her apartment.
We stayed there together.... I'm not excusing it. There is no excuse.
They were the happiest three days of my life--and always will be....
There are two kinds of men, you know, who make the best soldiers. The
butcher-boy type with no nerves and no imagination. And the fine,
high-strung type that fears battle and hates war and who whips himself
into courage and heroism because he's afraid he'll be afraid.... He
hated to go back, though he never said so.... He was killed ten days
later.... I went to Switzerland for a while when.... Winnie was with
me.... She was wonderful. I think I should have died without her.... I
wanted to at first.... But not now. Not now."
Stillness again. You heard only the child's breathing, gentle,
rhythmical.
Aunt Charlotte's wavering tremulous forefinger traced circles round
and round on her knee--round and round. The heavy black brows were
drawn into a frown. She looked an age-old seeress sitting there in her
black. "Well." She got up slowly and came over to the crib. She stood
there a moment. "It's a brave lie, Lottie. You stick to it, for her. A
topsy-turvy world she's come into. Perhaps she'll be the one to work
out what we haven't done--we Thrift girls. She's got a job ahead of
her. A job."
Lottie leaned forward in the darkness. "I'll never stand in her way.
She's going to be free. I know. I'll never hamper her. Not in word, or
look, or thought. You'll see."
"You probably will, Lottie. You're human. But I won't be here to see.
Not I. And I'm not sorry. I've hardly been away from the spot where I
was born, but I've seen the world. I've seen the world.... Well...."
She went toward the door with her slow firm step, putting each foot
down flat; along the hall she went, her black silk skirts making a soft
susurrus. Lottie rose, opened a window to the sharp spring air. Then,
together, she and Charley tiptoed out, stopping a moment, hand in hand
at the crib. The nursery room was quiet except for the breathing of the
child.
THE END
* * * * *
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphens left as printed. Chapter
XVIII used twice. The second occurrence changed to Chapter XIX.]
* * * * *
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