“You’re very welcome,” Edith assured them.
“Did you kill any Spaniards in Cuba?” asked Ted, while the visitors helped themselves gratefully to the food being served by the maid.
“Well, we shot at a lot of them, so we must have hit a few,” replied Cricket.
“Anyway, they were shooting at us from up in trees and under bushes, and there were too many trees and bushes for a man to take any chances.”
“Anyway, we licked ’em,” said Lew. “When a Spaniard runs he runs. And yells.”
“Have you got your guns?” Ethel asked.
“No, miss, we were discharged from service so we turned in our rifles.”
“Father has a lot of guns,” observed Kermit. “Ted can shoot, but I can’t.”
“You will be old enough before long,” said his father. “Ted shoots very well for an eleven-year-old.”
“I hit the bull’s eye twice,” Ted bragged, while Edith controlled the little jerk of panic she always felt when she thought of her eldest son with that gun. “Teach him early enough and he’ll know how to handle a weapon wisely,” had been Theodore’s argument when the new light rifle had been brought home.
Edith excused herself when the meal was over and went upstairs but the children refused to follow as she suggested. They followed the men instead, even Alice taking a chair in a corner, tucking her feet up under her, a habit Mame much deplored. Ted sprawled on his stomach on the floor at his father’s feet, chin on palms, while Archie crawled under Roosevelt’s chair and curled up there, half asleep.
The talk was fascinating to the children, even to Ethel,who had never showed any female dismay at violence; indeed she was a real little warrior herself, holding her own with two older brothers. All the Roosevelt children had been taught to stand for the right and fight for it if necessary, and there had been times when their mother secretly regretted this branch of her husband’s education, when Ted came home with a split lip and spectacles bent, or all of them engaged in battles in the nursery.
Alice had her own room now and was inclined to stay aloof when violence threatened, but earlier she had been one of the stoutest fighters.
Kermit leaned on his father’s shoulder drinking in the stories of Spanish ambushes and night attacks, of the renegade Cubans who begged food from the Rough Riders and then carried information to the Spanish headquarters.
“I shot one buzzard,” said Cricket. “He begged for some beans and I only had a spoonful and then he drew out a rusty old pistol. I got him before he could cock it.”
“Bang between the eyes?” questioned Kermit.
“Well, no. Elsewhere in the body,” replied Cricket delicately. “But the worst thing in Cuba wasn’t the Spaniards or being shot at, it was the goldurn mosquitoes—begging your pardon, Colonel.”
“They were so thick we had to cover up our heads with blankets to get any sleep.” Lew took up the story while Roosevelt smiled ruefully. “We couldn’t light a fire to smoke ’em out most of the times. That was what their sharpshooters were waiting for. Man show himself in the light and down he went!”
“The fever was bad too,” Roosevelt said. “It has already made very doubtful any hope of building a canal across Panama.”
“We had more sick with fever than we had wounded, even when we charged the Hill,” Ike recalled. “Well, we must be heading back, you fellows. It’s been fine seeing you again, Colonel, and we’re sure proud New York elected you governor.”
“We sure are,” agreed his lanky companions, rising to their feet.
“Our thanks for a good dinner, sir, and give our thanks to your good wife. We better push on, our man we hired to drive us is waiting and our train leaves at six o’clock and it’s a long way to the station.”
“I’m honored by your visit, boys,” Roosevelt followed them into the hall, the children trotting after.
When the Rough Riders had gone, Roosevelt picked up the sleeping Archie and carried him up the stairs, Ted climbing after, asking with every breath, “Can I go out now, Father? Is there enough snow for my sled?”
“There’s almost no more snow, Ted, but we’ll hope for some to fall overnight. Those fellows,” he said to Edith when he had put Archie on his bed and covered him well, “came out of their way to see me and I was very much honored by their visit. They hired that driver too and I don’t doubt they needed the money. Men who work in mills and have families have little money to spare. At least I know Cricket has a family. He showed me pictures of two boys when we were waiting for transportation in Tampa. He attached himself to me as a sort of unofficial aide. There was not much emphasis on rank in my command.”
“And what there was I’m sure you ignored,” said Edith indulgently. “It was undoubtedly a very democratic organization.”
“When you’re depending on a man to fire in time to save your life you have no use for protocol. That boy Lew, who had so little to say, twice saved my horse from being shot under me. Rank loses its importance when a lot of savage men are attacking you, and you see your men fall and know the next bullet may be for you. They were all gallant, all of them. I owe them more than I can ever repay.”
“Shall we go down now to the fires?” Edith asked. “By the way, Davis won’t be back today. I gave him Christmas afternoon off to be with his family. Some of his children have come home bringing their children with them. Can you attend to the furnaces?”
“I’d better put on some overalls. That’s a dirty job. Then I’m going to take the youngsters out awhile. We can have a romp in the barn. They get too restless in the house all day. I’ll keep Ted’s feet dry,” he promised.
“And don’t let them get overheated,” she warned. “That thermometer downstairs hasn’t risen above freezing all day. It seems awfully cold for so early in the winter. I hear Quentin now. I’ll take him down by the fire so Mame can get some rest.”
He shrugged into a rough army coat and cotton overalls and went below to poke and rattle vociferously at the two furnaces, shoveling out ashes, wondering whimsically what the important politicians of New York would think if they saw their governor-elect carrying a hod? Certainly they would respect him the more if they saw him in working garb at such a menial task, at least the working classes would and there were a lot more of them who had voted for him.
When the furnaces were filled and burning well he carriedup several armloads of wood, panting a little from the steepness of the stairs. Edith sat beside the fire holding small Quentin, while Kermit crawled about her feet, pushing a toy cannon about and yelling “Bang!”
Edith looked him over, aghast. “Theodore, those are your church clothes!”
“I had overalls over them and a jacket, but I’m going up to change now to take the children out.”
Kermit jumped up and rushed after him, shouting, “Father’s going out to play. Father’s going out to play.”
Alice emerged from her room where she had been stowing away her Christmas presents, and in the nursery Ethel hastily put her doll to bed and flew out.
“May we climb trees, Father?” she asked.
“Not today. It’s too damp and cold. Today we’ll play in the barn.”
Archie woke up then and came trudging after his father. “Are you going to shave, Father? May we watch you shave?”
“No, I’m not going to shave. Find your coat and cap. Mame’s asleep and Mother’s busy with the baby. Ted! Where are you? This expedition is about to start. Overshoes for everybody. Bring yours in here, Archie, and I’ll buckle them for you.”
It was Theodore Roosevelt’s favorite march, over the yard and out through the fences to the old barn that he had sentimentally left standing when he built Sagamore Hill because, he told himself, it had such a nice big haymow. When he had pushed forward with his men at San Juan Hill, struggling through thorny brush where poisonous snakes lurked, slipping and sliding over the matted vegetation, he had had the same feeling of leading a troop oftrusting souls as he had now, propping the heavy barn door open till the last straggler panted through.
“I speak to play cowboy,” shouted Ted.
“You need outdoors for cowboys,” Alice objected, “and horses!”
“Can’t we have the pony out, Father?” Ted begged. “Grant hasn’t had any exercise today.”
“No, I promised Mother we’d play inside. It’s fairly warm in here. Who’ll be first up the ladder?”
“Me!” shrilled adventurous Ethel. “But we can’t climb with these overshoes on. They’re too slippery.”
“Stack them all here neatly. And nobody is to turn and jump back down that ladder,” their father ordered.
“She did one day,” declared Kermit, “she landed right on my stomach.”
“You had your stomach in the way of my feet.” Ethel flashed quickly up the ladder. The others came after, Theodore taking the rear to help Archie, who had to be lifted up the last steps. The mow above was high and lighted by a dusty window. The roof had chinks here and there between the aged shingles, letting in pale beams of light that showed the ragged mounds of hay with a pitchfork sticking up out of one stack.
Ted promptly seized this and began waving it, shouting, “I’m a Rough Rider. I choose Father with me. The rest of you can be Spaniards.”
Theodore recovered the menacing weapon firmly and stood it in a far corner. “No Rough Rider fought with a pitchfork. I’ll be the Spaniards. The rest of you can attack from those stacks over there. Remember we beat the Spaniards!”
There was a great deal of yelling “Bang! Bang!” andwhen the hay was pretty well flattened and the children swarming over him Roosevelt obligingly lay flat pretending to gasp and moan from a lethal wound. His acting was so realistic that Ethel began to cry.
“I don’t like being Spaniards,” she wailed. “I don’t want to hurt Father.”
He sat up, reaching for her. “I’m not hurt,” he comforted, “just slightly out of breath. That hay is dusty. Now everybody help. We’ll pile it up again.” He retrieved the pitchfork and set to work, flinging forkfuls of hay in the air while the children gathered up as much as they could hold.
They achieved a beautifully rounded stack that almost reached the rafters and instantly Kermit and Ethel flung themselves at it, squealing happily.
“Stop! You’ll tear it down,” yelled Ted, blinking as the last ray of sun through the shingles glinted off his spectacles. “I want it all round and pretty.”
“We’ll play Indians and this is the Bad Lands of Dakota,” said his father. “Ted and Kermit will be Indians and the girls and Archie and I will be the settlers hiding from them.”
“I want to be an Indian,” Archie protested. “I can yell loud.” He emitted a piercing whoop to prove it.
“Indians don’t yell,” said Ted, scornfully. “They creep out of ambush very stealthily.” He quoted triumphantly from the stories their father had read to them. “They like to surprise their victims.”
“When they’re on horseback they yell,” Roosevelt said. “But you’ll be prowling Indians. They know how to be still as mice. And twice as deadly.” He twined a spray of hay through Archie’s hair for a feather. Instantly Ted andKermit had to have feathers too and tying knots in their short hair to hold a dry wisp of hay erect was a slow business.
“I wish we had some war paint,” said Ted, studying his brothers with grudging approval. “I could have used some of my water colors if I’d known we were going to play Indians.”
“You’d get it on your shirt and Mame would scold,” Kermit reminded him.
“She scolds anyway,” remarked Ted. “Mame is a very scoldy person.”
“Your faces are dirty enough to pass for Indians,” stated their father. “And remember that Mame is good and faithful and devoted to you children. You must always be kind to Mame and respectful and never talk back to her.”
“Ethel kicked her once,” Ted tattled.
“She swept up my paper doll hats. Anyway, I didn’t kick her hard and I got punished for it.”
Theodore Roosevelt knew that his children, indulged as they were in many ways, were sure that retribution for any misbehavior was certain and swift, relentlessly applied after any wrongdoing. His was always the correcting hand when he was at home, Edith always resigning that job to her husband, and he comforted himself with the idea that when they were bad they were still pretty good children. At least they were truthful, only Kermit now and then letting his facile imagination run ahead of him too fast but he was always sternly corrected for it, and as a rule his brothers and sisters dealt scornfully with his fancies.
“Now, the settlers will hide, and the Indians have to find them, and any redskin who is recognized gets shot,” Roosevelt outlined the rules.
“I wish I had a sunbonnet,” said Alice, as she made a little nest for herself far down in the warm hay. “Settlers’ wives always wore sunbonnets.”
“You’re wearing an imaginary sunbonnet,” said her father. “Tie it tightly under your chin and I’ll get my imaginary gun ready. Keep quiet, boys, and hide far down there behind the hay.”
He helped the girls to crouch deep in the dry stack, Alice disliking the tickle of the hay on her neck and impatiently slapping at it while Ethel burrowed happily as a mole.
“Holler when you’re ready,” called Ted from the opposite side of the stack.
“Settlers never let Indians know where they are hiding,” objected their father, who had dug himself deep into a pile; more excited and intrigued by the game than the young ones.
The Indians finally advanced, stealth being somewhat diminished by giggles from Archie and muttered orders to be quiet from Ted. Kermit gave a war whoop as he sprang at his father but landed in a heap where Roosevelt promptly dispatched him with an imaginary pistol and a very realistic “Bang.” Farther around the pile there were screams and snarls as Ted crept down on Ethel and grabbed her pig-tailed hair.
“You’re scalped!” he shouted. “You’re dead and scalped!”
Ethel promptly rolled on her back, walled up her eyes and made a melancholy face so realistic that Ted began to whimper.
“Make her stop, Father! She’s scaring me!”
“The game is over,” announced Roosevelt, lifting Kermitto his feet. Close by Alice and Archie had been tussling, Alice subduing the attack by tickling the Indian till he squirmed and giggled. “Brush the hay off your clothes. Now we’ll mend the stack again and see who can jump the farthest.”
“Oh, that’s easy!” bragged Ethel, reviving from the dead. “I can. I always do beat the boys.”
“You can’t beat me if Father will hold my glasses,” Ted objected.
“Stack hay and don’t argue. Archie, take off your jacket, you’ve got the back of your shirt full of hay.”
“It’s inside mine too,” said Kermit. “It scratches.”
“If we had been real Indians we wouldn’t have on shirts, we’d just have some stripes of war paint.” Ted began busily piling up the hay. “That game wasn’t fair anyway because Archie giggled and Alice forgot to shoot quick.”
“He fell on me.” She stood up. “Oh me! There’s Mame, scared to death to climb the ladder. Father, don’t make us go in yet.”
Mame’s head, wrapped in a crocheted wool scarf, showed halfway up the ladder. “Gentlemen to see the Colonel,” she announced, “Mrs. Roosevelt says it’s important.”
“Don’t go, Father,” pleaded Ted. “Tell Mother to send them away.”
“I can’t do that, Ted, because from now on I’m the servant of the people of New York. Ask them to wait by the fire, Mame, tell them I’ll be in presently.” Roosevelt shook the hay from his shirt and jacket and studied the disappointed faces of his children. All the faces were definitely grimy but each one reflected woe.
“Go ahead,” Roosevelt directed when Mame had backedgingerly down the ladder. “Oldest jump first. See how high you can land on the hay. We can jump for ten minutes.” He took out his watch.
Fifteen minutes later he led his bedraggled, breathless crew back to the house, entering through the rear door though usually he was most unconcerned about his own appearance, especially when the children were with him. But now, with his new responsibilities, he was beginning to be aware that he owed a certain distinction of attire to these people who had elected him to the most important office in the most important state. Also he was thinking uneasily of Edith’s carefully disciplined but inwardly disapproving attitude.
Mame met them in the hall, her own disapproval not masked at all. “I declare, you always seem to bring them back looking like ragamuffins, Colonel Roosevelt! Hurry up, all of you! Colonel, you’ve got a dirty face yourself. Your guests are in the library. Mrs. Roosevelt had me serve them some wine.”
As he hurried up the stairs Roosevelt was hoping that this waiting group would not be church dignitaries or any others who would resent being served wine. Edith was in their room changing for dinner after tending Quentin all afternoon. She looked at him and shook her head.
“Well, at least you did come up to change.” She sounded relieved. “I don’t know who they are. Mame let them in. After tending the baby all afternoon I wasn’t presentable myself. The nurse will be back at nine o’clock, thank goodness. I let her go home for Christmas. Hurry and change. They’ve already been there half an hour, with a horse waiting out there in the cold.”
Through the window they could see a handsome bayhorse and smart carriage waiting outside, the horse well blanketed and secured by an iron weight.
“Looks really important,” said Theodore, as he washed the dust of the loft off his face. “But they could have waited till Christmas was over and given a man a chance for a day in peace with his family.”
“Tomorrow it will be worse,” she reminded him. “You’ll have to be excused to sort your papers and I shall have to oversee the packing. We have just four days to get to Albany and I’d hate you to miss your own inauguration ceremony.”
“Is this jacket all right? After all, I’m supposed to be informal at home.”
“It will do. Straighten your tie. You always seem to get the knot slightly crooked.”
“So you will have some reason to notice me, my dear.”
He kissed her, grinning like a boy, and hurried down the stairs thinking that his Edith was still the loveliest thing alive and the best thing that had ever happened to one Theodore Roosevelt.
The three men rose as he entered the library and introduced themselves, though he already knew their identity having had some dealings with them when he was Police Commissioner of New York City. They were all members of the Board of Authority, a department of the city government, and immediately Roosevelt sensed that their mission was to gain some advantage in advance from the governor-elect.
The idea angered him and he made an excuse to mend the fire, poking and banging till he had worked off his momentary attack of spleen. Then he was ready for their proposal which came promptly, voiced in turn by each ofthe three. Roosevelt said nothing, sitting rubbing the back of his neck as he often did absently when he was trying to keep a cool head, a thing that with his impetuous nature and itch for action was not easy for him to do.
Finally, when their bland recital of their purpose in coming here—intruding on a father’s holiday at home—was all stated, the last part in concert, he jumped to his feet, paced across the room and back and braced himself facing them.
“Gentlemen, you have asked me to intervene in this matter which primarily affects only the City of New York, and your office, authority and functions in that city. Let me remind you in the first instance that I am not yet governor of New York nor will I be for several days. Secondly, I remind you that interference of this type is no function of the governor, and that your appeal (if it is an appeal) should be lodged with the proper authority to consider it. After that, gentlemen, I bid you good day.”
The three men went out grumbling and Theodore stamped up the stairs angrily, to where Edith sat by the fire, rocking Quentin, who had the sniffles, to sleep.
“Low, unprincipled scoundrels,” he stormed, “coming out here on Christmas Day to ask a favor of me knowing all the time it would be utterly outside all order and sense for me even to consider it.”
“There will be a great deal of that in a state like New York,” Edith reminded him. “You might as well make up your mind to accept it and be able to combat it calmly. Your experience as Police Commissioner certainly taught you that.” Edith was not too certain in her mind that anything she said would do any good. Theodore’s first impulse was always to fight any imposition or injustice toward himself or any other innocent party, whether the war waswaged against the oppressed Cubans or against civic or national righteousness.
That he was usually effective only increased his crusader’s urge and his wife had her own moments of trepidation about facing his career as governor. She had a clear and analytic mind that was always able to face truth even in its ugliest mien and she had a quiet dread of all those stone walls of intrenched selfishness and evil against which Theodore Roosevelt’s militant nature might hurl itself in vain. He had had so many high periods of satisfaction and achievement these past years he had become an idol to many but she knew that from the dawn of the history of the world the lands of it had been paved with the scattered dust of fallen idols.
She said then, “Mame is bathing the boys and Ethel, and they’ll go to bed early. Then you and I and Alice will have a quiet supper downstairs. The cook came in just a few minutes ago. Poor soul, she spent nearly the whole of Christmas afternoon just going over to see her sister and carry her a white fascinator she had crocheted. She was too conscientious about her duty here to take time even for a Christmas visit.”
But Theodore was still not soothed or mollified. “Those fellows who came here had the presumption to ask me to intervene in a civic matter that concerns only their own interests in the City of New York.” He resumed his angry self-justification, “I practically showed them the door. They were important men and politically powerful and now I have undoubtedly made three powerful and influential enemies.”
“You’ll make more, Theodore. You always have when you were in a position of power just as every man does.”
“Those fellows infuriated me by implying that at this stage of my public life I would risk being devious. All right, my dear, I won’t let them spoil our Christmas, what’s left of it. You are an angel to listen so understandingly to my tantrums. And before I forget it let me tell you you are just as pretty and sweet and cute as you were when you were sixteen years old.” He bent and kissed her.
“When I was sixteen I was an awful prig,” she said. “I remember. I wasn’t much better when you married me.”
“You were perfect when you married me. I was the humblest, most grateful man on earth that you were willing to risk a life with a rough, tactless fellow like me. But it has all been pretty good, hasn’t it, Edie? Now,” he promised, “it will be even better.”
Alice came in then looking a trifle wan. “Aren’t we going to have supper soon? I’m starving. The boys and Ethel are eating already in the nursery. I tried to beg a piece of cold turkey but Mame made me go out and leave them alone. Mame,” she remarked, with a little flare of self-importance, “ought to realize that I’m almost a young lady.”
“Mame will realize it when you act like a young lady,” said her father, “and not like a spoiled child. Let’s go now. Mother has to put the baby to bed, then she’ll be down.”
He took his daughter’s hand, though he sensed that irritated her, but squeezed it gently with a comradely pressure and they ran down the last few steps laughing as they entered the dining room, where a cold supper was spread.
“We’re both out of breath,” he remarked. “We’ve got to run more. We’ll start tomorrow. In Albany—”
“I don’t want to go,” she wailed abruptly. “I want to stay here.”
“We’d all like to stay here,” he said, “even if there are times when this house is as hard to heat as it has been lately.”
“Davis tends the furnace better,” said Alice with the bluntness that was beginning to be a characteristic of hers. It was like his own forthrightness, he admitted. Fortunately as the years went on an acquired tact and his innate kindness saved him from too many blunders, and Edith’s influence helped tame his impetuous instinct to speak out before he thoughtfully considered a subject.
Edith came in then and Roosevelt gallantly seated his wife and daughter, making both gestures equally formal to Alice’s evident approval. Then he picked up the carving knife but laid it down at an admonishing look from Edith.
“Alice, will you say grace?” he asked politely.
When she had finished he surveyed the remains of what had been a huge turkey.
“Our bird seems to have suffered from the ravages of a hungry tribe of Roosevelts,” he turned it over. “I do find a little dark meat left and some dressing. And oh yes, here is the intact remainder of the liver. Alice, you may have that. It makes red blood and you’ll need it when you tackle the beginnings of algebra and French. My dear,” he bowed across the table, “how will you have your bones?”
“Anything edible,” said Edith. “I’m not at all particular.”
She sat at the foot of the table looking every inch the poised, self-contained and gracious mistress of his house. He knew that she was good for him, taming his occasional warlike impulses as perhaps no other woman could have done. One quieting word from her was usually enough to steady him and calm his rages as she had just done without in the least appearing to do, upstairs.
Alice began her argument again. “Mother, why can’t I go to Albany with the rest of the family?”
“Because your mother’s family want you to have every advantage, Alice.” Edith spoke quietly, waving off an interruption from Theodore with a flick of her hand, “You must be grateful for them and for the education they are able to give you. A girl like you is born with an obligation to make the most of herself and I am sure you will, as I hope my own children will too.”
“That sounds like a lecture,” fretted Alice. “I’ll get enough lectures from my aunts and grandmother. They are always lecturing me to be a lady and I think ladies are stupid. I’d like to go to Dakota with Father and be a cowgirl. I ride better then the boys do now.”
“Your aunt will probably see to it that you have riding lessons in New York,” Edith said.
“I know about those. Side saddle and a derby hat and horses so slow and stodgy they won’t gallop. I had some the last time I was there at grandmother’s, with a silly groom leading the horse around by the bridle.”
Edith sighed. She had devotedly tried to do her best for Theodore’s daughter but Alice, like her father, had been born a rebel with an individuality that would always resent any set pattern of behavior. At least, Edith comforted herself, the responsibility was not hers alone nor could she reproach herself if inherited traits were too strong. Thank goodness there was no rampant individuality in her own small daughter! Ethel was usually as placid as a Dutch housewife, though she could not be imposed upon and always stood stubbornly for her own rights.
Dinner was not quite over when two small figures appeared at the dining room door. In their nightclothes Kermitand Ethel stood there, their small feet blue with cold.
“Go back to bed quickly, you’ll catch your death of cold!” their mother scolded, herding them back toward the stairway.
“I’ll come along,” said Theodore. “I’ll just go back and find the chivalry book, as Ted calls it.”
“You spoil them,” protested his wife. “They were up before dawn this morning.”
“Early yet,” he made excuse, “only a little after eight.”
“It’s almost nine,” she corrected. “Supper was late because Christmas upset the household routine. Jump in bed, both of you. Kermit, wait—we’ll have to wipe off the bottoms of your feet. You forgot your slippers again.”
“They fall off. Anyway, they’re not so very dirty.”
“Too black for the sheets.” Mame came in then as Edith was tucking the covers around Ethel.
“They slipped out when I was back in my room,” she explained. “Kermit is always slipping out of his bed. He’d sleep under it half the time if I didn’t watch him, makes me feel like tying him into it.”
“I can untie knots,” he said defiantly, “or I could chew the rope in two.”
“Don’t be saucy,” his mother said, sponging the thin grimy toes. “Run along, Mame, Colonel Roosevelt is coming up to read to them.”
“It’ll be battles or Injun fighting and get them all stirred up and excited,” grumbled Mame as she went out.
Alice followed her father into the nursery. “I’m surely glad I have my own room,” she said. “There’s just no peace or privacy in this nursery any more.”
“It’s time you were in bed too, Alice,” said her stepmother. “You were up before dawn this morning.”
“I want to hear the story,” Alice was plaintive. “I promise to go to bed right after. After all I won’t be with Father very much longer.”
“Let her stay, I’ll hustle her to bed right after,” said Roosevelt.
Ted sat up, regarded the book his father was opening. “I vote for Sir Lancelot,” he announced firmly.
“I vote for dragons,” said Kermit. “I like stories with dragons with fire coming out their noses.”
“Are there any dragons in Dakota, Father?” Ethel wanted to know. “Where you shot all the animals? Those up on the wall?”
“Of course not!” Alice was scornful. “Dragons are a fairy tale like gnomes and giants.”
“Goliath wasn’t a fairy tale,” declared Ted. “He is in the Bible and the Bible is the Word of God.”
“Goliath was a tall, strong man,” said his father. “We still see and hear of very tall, strong men who in that day when most men were short would have been called giants. I knew a cowhand in the West who was seven feet tall without his boots. When he rode an average size cow pony his feet almost touched the ground, he could step over a yearling calf or a fence as easily as you can step over a threshold.”
“I can jump over a fence,” bragged Kermit, “if I can climb up a little way.”
“Ponies can jump over without climbing,” said Ted, “but they have very strong muscles in their back legs. They can kick hard too. Grant kicked a pig once and made him roll over and squeal loud. He tried to eat my straw hat once too.”
“You were crawling around under his front legs. He sawthe hat and thought it was good to eat,” Alice defended her pet pony.
“That was the summer Father found the big hollow tree and he let us down inside it on a rope. You wouldn’t remember that, Ethel, you were just a baby.”
“She was three. Father let her down too,” Alice recalled, “and she was scared to death and screamed.”
“It was dark down there,” said their father. “We will now end all reminiscing and read the book. But first, Alice, toss a little light wood on that fire.”
“I like open fires better than radiators,” Alice said. “On radiators you can’t toast marshmallows. And if you put your feet on one with rubbers on they smell awful.”
The old tale of Sir Lancelot and the wicked Sir Modred, the wizard and the dragon, held them enthralled for fifteen minutes. Theodore was a slow and dramatic reader and though the book was a simplified version for children it was not too simplified and he skipped none of the long words, but enunciated each clearly, sometimes pausing to make the older ones say what the word meant and speak it several times. Ted already had a mature vocabulary for his age and the children had heard very little baby talk from their parents, though an occasional visitor was apt to gush and coo, to the boys’ thinly veiled disgust.
Archie was already asleep when the story was finished and Kermit’s eyes were glazing though he fought to keep them open. When Alice followed her father out she observed in a suave tone of superiority that reminded Theodore vaguely of his own mother. “After all, Father, we have to remember that they are only children. Archie is practically an infant yet.”
“We’ll remember that, Alice, and be very charitable inour judgments,” he answered with the same gravity. “Now you scamper before Mother scolds both of us.”
Suddenly she flung her arms around him. “Oh, Father, I don’t want to go back to New York. I hate it! Why can’t I go to Albany with you?”
“That has been all decided and explained to you. Your mother’s family are very fond of you and do a great deal for you, and you must be grateful. Not many young girls are so lucky.”
“There are so many rules,” she sighed. “Life is too bewildering and mixed up for a young girl.”
“What a young girl needs at this stage of her growth is sleep.” He gave her a fatherly smack. “Get along with you now, and be content for a few years to leave the problems to older people who love you and want the best for you.”
She was halfway down the stairs and she left him very reluctantly and backed up the rest of the flight, calling “Good night, Father.”
When she was safely in her room he went back to the library fire where Edith was sitting, on her knee a piece of embroidery stretched on a hoop.
“All should now be silent.” He dropped gratefully into a deep chair. “From the way my own eyelids feel I’ll be ready to join them in unconsciousness very soon. This has been a long day.”
“And tomorrow will be another,” she said, “but this has been a good day. For me at least. When none of the children are ailing with anything,” spoke the mother, “I am content. I hope and pray we don’t have too many visitors to usurp your time tomorrow, as no one else can sort and pack most of your personal papers.”
“Undoubtedly the locusts will descend as they usuallydo on a new man in office. Favors, always favors, and if they can get in a word before the other fellow they have the urge to speak it. And only one answer I can give them now, no matter how righteous their plea. When that is no longer timely I’ll have to depend on the grace of God to give me wisdom but fortunately there will be other people between me and so much importunity.” He got to his feet looking aghast. “Don’t tell me that’s somebody else! I hear a horse and wheels.”
“It may be Davis. Sometimes he borrows a horse to go to his preaching service. You assured him it was all right.” She folded her work and stood too, listening. “No, they are stopping outside, whoever it may be. I’ll go up now, Theodore. No one wants to see me at this time of night.”
The wheels outside were silent and though it was too dark and lowering to see anything, Theodore heard two persons mounting the front steps, moving very lightly. He went to the front door carrying a lamp with him, and held it high to study the faces of his visitors. One was a gaunt, middle-aged woman in a thin coat, her head tied up in a wool scarf, the other a lank boy about fifteen who clawed off his hat and ducked his head in embarrassment.
“Evening, sir,” said the woman, bobbing stiffly. Her ungloved hands were blue with cold, and her lips were blue and bitten. “I’m Dorsie Witten come from away up in Oneida. I’ve come a long way to see you, sir. Part of the ways by train and the rest with this hired rig. I sold two good cows to fetch the money to come to see you when you got elected governor and I hope you’ll listen patient to a heart-broke mother’s story.”
“Come in! Come in out of the cold.” Theodore held the door wide, the raw wind flaring the lamp. When they wereinside he said, “Any woman who has come so far deserves to be heard though I can’t promise I can do anything for you. I’m not even governor of New York yet, you know.”
“Well, you will be, sir. Clint here said I should wait till you come to Albany that wasn’t so fur for us to travel, but I said there’d be so many bigwigs crowding in to see you then I’d never even get let in much less get a chance to talk to you.”
“I hope no one will be turned away who really needs to see me, madam, but the governor of a big state like New York is a mighty busy man as you can understand,” he said. “Please sit down here by the fire and tell me your business and make it brief if you don’t mind, for with five children and the Christmas holiday I’ve had a long day.”
“Is this Christmas?” she looked bewildered. “You know since Ollie got in trouble I’ve been so worried and upset I don’t know Sunday from Monday. You see, Governor, Ollie—Oliver he was named for his grandfather—is my oldest boy and my dependence. I tried to raise both of my boys good and honorable and Ollie wasn’t bad, Governor, he wasn’t a bad boy, he was just quick-tempered like his daddy. Eph, my husband, was fire and tow, he had a terrible temper and was easy to get mad, that’s how come Eph to get into trouble.”
“You’re here to see me about your husband?” he asked.
“No, sir, can’t nothing be done for Eph. I been to the other governor a’ready. He’s in Sing Sing for the rest of his life. He got mad years ago and cut a man terrible so he died and they sent him up the river for it but it’s Ollie that’s worrying me. Ollie’s only nineteen years old. Ollie killed a man, Governor, and I ain’t defending him but it was in a fair fight. Ollie shot to save his own life.”
“He did not claim he shot in self-defense? A man has a right to defend himself, in law, Mrs. Witten,” Roosevelt said.
“Well, they brought out in the trial that the other feller was shot in the back and didn’t have a gun with him. But he was heading for where it stood, Governor, Ollie said so and I believe him. Ollie was just smart and shot quick, knowing the other feller was a crack shot and would get him from a long ways off. Now they’re sending Ollie up where his father is, and I got nobody to depend on but Clint, and he ain’t just right in his head, and I got three little ones, all girls. Clint forgets everything. Come in from the field and wander off to town and leave the mules out there hitched to the plow all night if the children and I didn’t go out and fetch ’em in. I’ve finished many a field myself, leaving my children playing in a furrow.” She twisted her thin hands together, casting reproachful glances at Clint, whose stolid face showed no emotion whatever.
Roosevelt looked with some compassion at the woman’s ravaged face and thin body. How many such would he see in the next two years, harassed, frightened women, all desperately pleading mercy for violent-tempered husbands or sons? For an instant the prospect appalled him and briefly he dreaded the heavy responsibility of a great human population.
Then sober judgment came, steadying his nerves, and he spoke in a calm, fatherly voice. “Mrs. Witten, I know nothing of the facts in this case of your son. A man who shoots another in the back condemns himself from the first in the minds of all sober men.”
“I been tellin’ Ma that,” stated Clint, speaking for the first time in a voice surprisingly masculine and deep comingfrom such an undersized, emaciated body. “All the way down here I told her it was a waste of money comin’ way down here just to see you. Them was good cows we sold to pay for it too.”
“You know I’m not yet governor of New York,” Roosevelt reminded her. “I have no legal right to do anything about any case, especially one that has been already settled in the courts and the defendant convicted. What possible defense could your son have for shooting an unarmed man in the back? Didn’t he testify in his own defense?”
“He swore he thought that feller—Morgan Tuttle was his name—was going after his gun and Ollie knowed Morgan was a dead shot. He could have killed Ollie from a hundred yards off and Ollie knowed it. They was huntin’ together up in the mountains.”
“That was what the fight was about,” put in Clint. “Deer they shot up in them hills. Morgan wasn’t going to divide fair.”
“Was that the legal season to kill a deer?” Roosevelt asked. “I thought they were protected by law.”
“No, it wasn’t, but it come out in the trial anyway because Morgan’s wife blabbed to the law,” Clint supplied. “We ain’t paid Ollie’s lawyer yet but he didn’t do nothin’ nohow.”
“There was little he could do in the face of the evidence,” said Roosevelt.
“He said that,” she admitted, “and he said he aimed to charge us a hundred dollars when he didn’t do nothing.”
“Did he make you any promises?”
“No, sir, he wouldn’t do that. He just said he’d do his best but he didn’t do nothin’,” insisted Clint.
“It’s hard to justify any man who shoots another in theback, even if he has a weapon handy,” argued Roosevelt. “After all Ollie could have run. He didn’t have to stand still and let the other man shoot at him.”
“That’s what the judge said,” Clint added.
“My men wasn’t never no hand to run away from trouble,” remarked Mrs. Witten. “They always faced up to trouble mighty bold.”
“It’s not being bold to shoot a man in the back,” commented the hero of San Juan Hill, letting a little twinge of guilty memory come over him briefly. How many men of the Spanish troops had he shot in the back in Cuba? But that was war. The enemy had had the same chance to get him from the rear and he had known it. As Ollie had had the chance to run, so had the soldiers of Spain the chance to surrender but no man liked the thought of killing a human being and soldiers had to be hardened before they could do it, except in desperation to save their own lives. Only the toughest ones had no qualms, and it was ironic that usually they made the best infantry troops.
He had had a few timorous and squeamish fellows in his Rough Riders but when the fighting got hot they forgot their scruples and came through gallantly.
He sent the two Wittens away finally, promising to look into the case of Ollie Witten further when he came into office:
“I assume you want an official pardon for your son? There is nothing else that can be done when a man is already serving his sentence except a parole. And with Ollie’s record of violence I doubt that could be attained. A pardon on a hardship plea would be your only hope.”
“He got life like Pa,” Clint said, “and they told us he was mighty lucky.”