CHAPTER VIINFINITE PATIENCE
It was the day of the Harvard-Pennsylvania boat race. Madelaine Theddon had come from Boston to cheer for the crimson. Gordon met her and after the races off Court Square they went to The Worthy for dinner.
Springfield was holding open house whether it wanted to hold open house or no. Groups of college boys paraded the streets. Banners were rampant; bands played. In early evening large numbers of Harvard undergrads descended upon The Worthy dining room and commandeered the place for their personal mess hall. It was a hilarious, happy, boisterous crowd,—and atmosphere. In another year the grim hand of war would grip the vitals of the nation. Let academic masculinity eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow most of it would be slopping in trench water or dodging shrapnel.
Madelaine and Gordon had entered the room early. They had secured a table beside one of the Worthington Street windows. The day died and evening came. The air was balmy and the windows were open. Madelaine felt light-hearted. The vacation was welcome and she abandoned herself to that carnival spirit.
Gordon had “straightened out.” There was no doubt about it. He had likewise straightened up. He was sleekly barbered at the moment, almost distinguished in his dinner clothes. He acted and talked like a man with a great life purpose. He spoke of the iron works, swollen with munitions orders, as he spoke of his pocket. Yet not in conceit or brag. He had been placed in charge of an important department and was pursuing that business as though it were his own. And the end was not yet. Gordon so contended, and had found the biggest thrill of all in building, creating, producing, doing some great, useful thing, the resultsfrom which he could see with his eyes and touch with his hands.
In the interim between race and dinner, Madelaine had hurried home and changed her frock. She was now a dream—a vision—in black tulle lightened with silver, her cheeks flushed, her calm eyes unusually merry, the inverted lights of the big dining room shining on raven hair massed high above a wide, brainy forehead. With Gordon in his new incarnation across the snowy linen and a tiny candle-lamp with a red-mulled shade at her right wrist making the dinner rendezvous cozy, despite the noise going on in the room, Madelaine almost fancied she was in love with Gord and the world a bit nebulous with glorified mist.
Wine flowed freely at the college tables. Glitter went in hand with horseplay. A big tin horn was much in evidence. At intervals, its blare cleft the tumult with nerve-jolting suddenness. Ever and anon, amid the tinkle of tableware and the popping of corks, there was song.
The boys sang “Fair Harvard”, “There’s a Tavern in the Town”, “Little Brown Jug”, and that latter-day classic, “Mary Ann McCarty, She Went Out to Dig Some Clams”, and they kept time to Mary Ann McCarty’s vicissitudes in the clam-digging vocation with cutlery, wine bottles and feet. An especially hilarious group of fat boys off in a corner originated new yells. Colored waiters sweated and hurried and dodged bits of food hurled at them and made themselves as agreeable as possible at the prospect of many bowls filled with tip money to be left behind for distribution when the festivities were over.
The waiter who served Madelaine and her escort asked about wine. Gordon raised an inquiring eyebrow. Madelaine named her preference. Gordon ordered an elaborate dinner but no liquor—for himself.
“What?” the astonished girl exclaimed.
Gordon laughed as he slid the big menu carefully under the base of the lamp.
“I’ve had enough of that stuff in the past—enough to last me all the rest of my life. It’s time I let it alone, Madge. Besides, I don’t feel I can afford it. Oh, I don’t mean the cost in money. I’m swinging a big thing, Madge, and I can’t afford a muddled head.”
A queer thrill burned at the roots of the girl’s fine hair.
“Well, you have changed, Gordon! I’ll give you credit!”
“You’re responsible, Madge. If you hadn’t given me an incentive, I’d still be blowing around western Massachusetts dodging traffic cops and breaking glass. You know that, don’t you, dear?”
He reached his hands across the small table and covered her own.
“Don’t, Gord! Not here!”
“Don’t you, Madge?”
“Don’t I what?”
“Don’t you know it—that you’re responsible?”
“Do you mean by that, if I were suddenly removed from your scheme of things you’d go all to pieces—back to the kind of chap you were a couple of years ago?”
The man’s face fell.
“Perhaps, Madelaine,” he said solemnly.
“That’s weak, Gordon. You must play the man for the sake of playing the man, not because you want to court the favor of a certain woman.”
“I hoped you’d take it as a compliment, Madge.”
“I do take it as a compliment. But the responsibility isn’t reassuring. I don’t want to feel that I’m a man’s—goal. There’s so much worth while in the world as a goal beside the mere winning of a woman.”
“Not when a fellow’s in love, Madge.”
“Let’s not talk about love. Let’s just enjoy ourselves.”
Gordon felt he was annoying her. He changed the subject.
“All Springfield seems to be divided into two camps to-night,” he said. “Those who are college people and those who are not.” The remark was occasioned by the stream of people passing along the walk outside, at shoulder-height below them.
Madelaine turned to watch the crowd. At the riot of hilarity from within the big dining room, many paused and smiled. Others appeared annoyed. Still others looked wistful. Notably among the latter was a young fellow who stood on the edge of the Worthington Street curbing and stared up into the dining room. He was a pale-faced, grim-jawed, plainly clothed chap with hungry eyes. Madelaine was conscious that he had been standing opposite their window, staring up for several minutes.
“What’s that fellow doing?” demanded Gordon. “Is he staring at you and me—or merely trying to snitch a chunk of this room’s boisterousness free of charge?”
“Poor fellow!” returned the girl. “He looks as though he belonged in here but for some reason knew that he’d be ejected if he tried to enter—and what a peculiar ear he has. Mercy, I wish he wouldn’t stare so! His expression will haunt me in sleep to-night.”
“I’ll send some one out to tell him to move on!”
“No! No! Don’t do that! Let’s just ignore him. Maybe he’ll go away.”
The waiter came with iced blue-points. When Madelaine next glanced sideways out the window, the fellow with the wistful face had gone away.
Nathan wandered the streets of Springfield’s business section and his heart was heavy within him. The college boys jostled him from the walks. The band music and the blaring horns hurt him. He lamented the coincidence which had brought him to Springfield on a day’s sales business while this alma-mater joviality was in progress. It mocked him with all of that youthful heritage of which he felt himself cheated.
The windows of The Worthy had held an especial fascination. It wasn’t altogether the care-free college singing, the Mardi-Gras spirit, theesprit de corpsamong all college men in town that night. It was a sense of his own inability to attain to what these things stood for without hurting some one to do it. He would have liked to be dining in such a place, across a snowy table from a beautifully gowned woman,—like it very, very much. But probably the fellow whom he had watched with that princess in black tulle thought nothing of it. That was his life. He placed no value on the delights of high-caste living because he had never known anything else. He disclosed it by his poise and easy familiarity with his environment, his graceful behavior and carriage in juxtaposition to his charming companion. Economists and peanut politicians might rail that America has no classes or castes. What a mockery! Between thelowly-born and the purple must ever exist a gulf as wide as the planets. It was not something to be attained: it was a heritage. At least he believed so.
Nathan went to his hotel down near the railroad arch and tried to get solace from a cigar. It was a very expensive cigar. It had cost him thirty-five cents. But it was Job’s comfort. He might make a fortune, he might buy clothes that cost thousands and smoke thirty-five-cent cigars by the bale, but that would never give the provincial the easy grace and the utter lack of self-consciousness displayed by that fellow and girl outlined in the Wonder Window. For it was a Wonder Window to poor Nathan. It opened in a Castle Wall where the tatterdemalion crowd passed underneath to wend their clodhopper turkey tracks to mud huts out on the edge of the moor.
“And I suppose, if dad had only been minded that way, I might have worked my way through college and been in such a place with a crowd of revelers and such a woman across from me to-night,” he said bitterly. “Yet my problem is how to overcome that handicap now. How can I? What must I do? Some one ought to write a book on how to climb out of mediocrity and Be Somebody!”
Be Somebody! That was Milly’s code now. But what a mess she was making of it! Some one ought to write a book to help women to be somebody, also. Hang it all, what was the matter with life, anyhow? Where in it all was the great constructive purpose?
Nathan never forgot that night in Springfield when all unwittingly he had beheld Madelaine Theddon above him in the hotel window. Not because he had seen Madelaine and remembered her, but because of the events which followed swiftly.
He had just retired to bed and pushed the button extinguishing his lamp, to lie and ponder on the problem of how he could Be Somebody, when two sharp taps came at his door. He arose and opened it a crack.
“Telegram, sir!” said the lad outside.
Nathan reached for his vest and gave the boy ten cents. Then he sank down on the edge of his bed and tore the end of the flimsy yellow envelope.
COME AT ONCE URGENT ACCIDENT MILDRED
COME AT ONCE URGENT ACCIDENT MILDRED
COME AT ONCE URGENT ACCIDENT MILDRED
Nathan tried to get his home in Paris on the long-distance. There had been a bad thunderstorm above Brattleboro and the wires were down. He arose and dressed but could not get a train to take him through to White River Junction before six-thirty in the morning.
At my wife’s suggestion, I went down the line to meet Nathan. Mary Ann drove the roadster down to Gilberts Mills. I boarded the shuttle train there in order to ride up into the town with him alone. I found him in the vile-flavored smoker. He jumped as I laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Bill!” he cried. “Where’d you come from now?”
“Just getting back from the Mills where I had to chase a news story,” I lied. “You haven’t been home yet, I take it?”
“I’m just getting home. I got a telegram from Mildred. Do you know about anything happening to her or my folks, Bill?” he asked anxiously.
“Move over, old man,” I requested. “Let’s smoke a cigar—a good one.”
“Do you, Bill?”
“Yes.”
“What is it? In God’s name, what is it?”
“Nathan, it’s a darned long lane that doesn’t have a turning sometime,” said I. “And some of the turns are pleasant and some are hard. The mystery to me is why most of the turns for some people seem to be hard ones.”
“Bill,—cut out the suspense. You’re trying to prepare me for bad news. And I think you’re lying about that news story. You came down a purpose to meet me. Let’s have it—the worst. I’ve stood a lot. But I—well, anything’s better than suspense. What’s happened?”
Once before I had been called to break bad news to my chum. I had done it crudely, tossed him a paper with a red-inked item which had aborted his whole life. I wanted to do a more artistic bit of work now. But I’m afraid again I messed it.
“It’s your little girl, Nat,” said I. “She’s—gone away.”
“Gone away? You mean she’s run off—she’s lost?”
“Run off? No! Lost? Yes!”
He gripped my arm.
“You mean little Mary’s—dead?”
My cigar tasted like tar and ashes. I simply proffered him a short clipping from theTelegraphof the previous evening.
AUTO KILLS CHILD───SMALL DAUGHTER OF MR. AND MRS. NATHAN FORGE HIT BYRED FRONT GROCERY TRUCK IN MAIN STREET
AUTO KILLS CHILD───SMALL DAUGHTER OF MR. AND MRS. NATHAN FORGE HIT BYRED FRONT GROCERY TRUCK IN MAIN STREET
AUTO KILLS CHILD
───
SMALL DAUGHTER OF MR. AND MRS. NATHAN FORGE HIT BY
RED FRONT GROCERY TRUCK IN MAIN STREET
The community was shocked at four o’clock this afternoon when it became known that little Mary Frances Forge, aged six years, had been struck by one of the delivery trucks belonging to the Red Front Grocery in East Main Street opposite the Catholic Cemetery.
The little girl was on her way home from school when the accident happened. One of her companions chased her and she left the sidewalk and darted into the road to escape her pursuer. The truck was coming from a westerly direction....
Nathan passed his hand across his eyes. He took a long breath, held it, released it raggedly.
“Takes grit to live sometimes, doesn’t it, Bill? Just grit!” he said.
Little more was spoken on that ensuing two miles before the train drew alongside the Paris depot platform.
It takes grit to live sometimes—just grit!
Milly naturally was the more grief-stricken of the two in the hectic days which followed. But it was Mrs. Anna Forge who shed the most tears and acted generally as though the bottom had dropped from the universe.
She gave up her job in the millinery store—just why it was necessary to give up her job under the circumstances is difficult to explain, but she did—and moved to Nathan’s house, bag and baggage, “to help.” That her help had not been solicited was immaterial. That there was nothing especially to “help” was likewise passed over. She had notvisited Nathan’s home a dozen times since his marriage, not being able to “get along” with Nathan’s wife. And the child had once blandly commented that its grandmother “had starin’, ugly eyes,” which had prejudiced her from intimacy with Nat’s youngster and convinced her that Nathan’s wife and family were somehow in league against her and had put the child up to it. But now that the forked tines of death had struck near home, and tears being right in her line, she insisted on a bed in the front room, and no paid Semitic mourner ever gave greater satisfaction for services rendered than Mrs. Forge before that ordeal was ended.
Incredible to relate, Nathan’s loss called up all her own losses a hundredfold and the distressing period was aggravated by the mother’s worry because the oil-stock salesman had stopped answering her letters as to just when she was to get her dividends of three thousand per cent., and the cold, stark presentiment began to dawn on the woman that perhaps her investment was in jeopardy. It being a time of general sorrow, her own worries and troubles were right in line and she bunched them together. Nathan heard about them for the three-hundredth time; what the oil-stock salesman had said to her, and what she had said to the oil-stock salesman, and what he had promised and what she had expected, and what Johnathan had said to her apropos of her value as a wife during twenty-five years of incompatibility, and what she had retorted to Johnathan,—till Milly exploded and declared if she said another word, she, Milly, would shriek; which Mrs. Forge did and which Milly did, and Nathan had to act as peacemaker and keep all hands as reasonably pleasant as possible until after the services.
I slept with Nathan the night before the funeral. Milly had sent for her own mother and was sleeping with her, the wife characteristically preferring the solace and companionship of her mother to her husband, and my presence being proffered to mitigate my friend’s load as much as I could. And Mrs. Forge wept for her lost grandchild and oil-stock—or oil-stock and grandchild—and would not be comforted.
I marveled at my chum’s moral fiber and mental strength. Once I caught tears streaming down his face, when alone for a moment. But he smiled courageously through them and seemed grateful for my sympathy. His lips were veryfirm through that ghastly ordeal and his patience was infinite.
On the night before the funeral, as aforesaid, Mrs. Anna Forge walked the upper hallway outside our door, thought of all the indignities, injustices and sorrows she had ever experienced and gave the two of us a full account of them. Whole hours passed thus and time slipped on into deeper night. At intervals Mrs. Forge’s haranguing voice stopped or she was compelled to stop because of her sobbing. But she soon started in again. Then it dawned upon her that Nathan might not be listening. When she called to him and he failed to answer—though he was wide-awake enough—she planted herself in front of the bedroom door and gave Nathan to understand in high-C language that if Nathan didn’t come down in the parlor and hear all about his father and the oil stock and “what she had suffered”, she would come in there and talk to him even if there was a strange man in the bed. She didn’t propose to go on talking when he didn’t show any more “respect” for his mother than to go to sleep.
“Nat,” said I, “may I take a hand and settle this? You can’t listen to this harangue all night. You’ve got to get some sleep or you’ll go crazy.”
“No, no, Bill,” he answered. He sighed and stretched wearily in the bed. “It’s only mother and—well, she can’t help it. She’s built that way, and I suppose her own troubles have sort of unbalanced her.”
“Nathan!” came the mother’s stringent demand. “I’ll not stand here talking all night! Will you come down and hear what I’ve got to say, or will I come in?”
“Nat,” I cried angrily, “for God’s sake let me settle this!”
“You couldn’t, Bill. You’d only make her worse. And I don’t want her to run screaming down the center of the street at this time of night, arousing the neighbors and telling them all her troubles. I’ll go down and talk with her.”
And he did.
I lay in the bed alone and heard the clock strike two and three. And still the mother kept the son downstairs and recounted things that Nathan had heard a thousand times,—what Johnathan had said and what she had said, and it would have been better to have death in her own house at such a time, wouldn’t it, than to have “put up” with what she “put up” with, and would Nathan see a lawyer in the morning andget him after those oil-company rascals, and where did Nathan think his father had gone and was there any prospect of making him suffer for deserting her? So on and on and on and on, into the hours of morning.
But the poor fellow did not lose his temper, did not oppose her or argue with her or treat her in any way but with the same kindly patience he had shown toward every one since the tragedy happened.
Mrs. Anna Forge literally talked herself out. A few minutes after four o’clock she assented to being tucked in on the front-room sofa and demanded that Nathan should kiss her good night, for he was all she had, wasn’t he, and did he love his dear, dear mother and who had done any more for him than she had done? Then Nathan came back to bed, tossed his bathrobe on the footboard and crawled in beside me.
“Cut out the hero stuff, Bill,” he snapped. “She’s simply a mental invalid and should be treated as such. Anything otherwise would be cruel.”
There may be those who have felt out of patience with Nathan at certain periods in this intimate biography. They may have execrated him for an “easy mark.” They may have wanted to kick him, grab him by the shoulders and shake some spine into him. I confess I have felt so myself. But speaking for myself, away down deep in my heart of hearts, there’s something about a fellow who could do what Nathan did, the night before his baby was buried, that has my humble admiration. In the parlance of my newspaper office, I’ve got “to hand it to him.” He’s the sort of man the world needs more of. He’s far from being a weakling. He’s big!
And so the Forge baby was buried.