CHAPTER XXHILL TOPS
Their baby was born the following August.
The day of its arrival, Nathan paced the cool, impersonal corridors of the maternity hospital like an animal crazed, obsessed with the necessity of getting relief by tearing something.
He had often smiled over the acclaimed nervousness and general distress of certain young fathers, awaiting the arrival of their first-born. He was not smiling now. Suppose the child should cost Madelaine her life? What youngster could ever compensate for the Woman Beautiful who from the first had made matrimony almost an idealist’s dream? If he lost Madelaine, he could understand how fathers could hate their offspring.
But there was to be no occasion for any such unnatural attitude. At twenty minutes past three o’clock, a nurse came down the elevator and accosted him with a cheery, knowing smile.
“Congratulations first, Mr. Forge,” she cried. “You have an eight-pound son. Everything’s perfectly normal and your wife’s doing lovely.”
A son!
A hot knife went straight through Nathan’s heart and into his soul.
“Come back about six o’clock,” the nurse advised him, though Nathan scarcely heard. “You’ll find your wife in Room Eighty-eight.”
A few minutes later Nathan left the hospital. He sped blindly for a florist’s to buy flowers, flowers—millions of flowers. He was boyishly obsessed to buy flowers.
Madelaine was dozing when Nathan entered her room at six o’clock. She turned her head toward him, lifting eyesthat were still hollow and slightly glazed with suffering. But when she recognized him, a coy smile showed about her delicate mouth.
“Well, Mr. Man?” she demanded. “And now what have you to say?We—have—a—son!”
Nathan, down beside the bed, buried his face in her soft mother-throat.
“If there was only something big I could do to show how much I love you, dear,” he cried thickly, “—oh, God, if I only knew what to do——”
“Do? I thought we settled that—the night on the steam-ship—coming back from Japan? A similar ‘do’ will be quite sufficient for the present also.”
She held up her lips. He did.
It was not until the following morning, however, that Nat saw his son. The nurse entered with a heavy roll of flannel and laid the baby in his arms. Gently Nat pulled aside the blanketing and a tiny hand came up. It was groping in its new-born blindness,—groping, groping, groping.
But it did not grope fruitlessly. That exquisite, shell-like little palm found a great talon claw,—the life-twisted hand of its father. And it gripped that calloused Thing tightly. It could always grip that calloused Thing tightly.
Nathan’s only comment came in a whisper. To his boy he spoke a promise:
“There shall be no Fog for you, little son. As you grow along—your dad—will understand!”
Hill Tops!
It was a night in November. Darkness had fallen early. A fire had been lighted in the open grate and the big southern living room was pungently warm. Shades had been drawn, shutting out the dreary autumn afterglow. Aside from the ruddy gleam of the crackling fire, the only illumination in the apartment came from the pedestal lamp beside a piano. The lamp had an old-rose shade. All the hues and angles of the room were softened and blended by its richness.
Nathan came down the wide front stairs, tying the cordsof his dressing-gown as he descended. He turned into the living room. A few feet inside the door, he paused.
The room was perfect. White, mahogany, and old rose was the color scheme. The ceiling was shaded and the furniture was heavy. Yet so deftly had the latter been arranged and so perfect the spacing, that the room had an air of fine distance and perspective; relaxation and rest was the result and it soothed like an opiate.
The man’s artist-eye could neither miss nor pass lightly over the proportion and fastidiousness that gave the room its character,—the sense of perfect order without the least sacrifice of comfort. A few oil paintings filled appropriate spaces upon the warm brown walls. Smaller corners held etchings and exotic prints that Madelaine had brought from Japan. The dull polish of the piano, writing desk, music cabinet, table, reflected the glint of the firelight. An exquisite sculptural study showed at just the right point in the corner across the heavy divan drawn up before the grate. And as Nathan inventoried these things, a deep sense of peace grew upon him. It entered into his being with the atmosphere he breathed. An old phrase he had used somewhere before whispered softly again in his subconscious mind, something about “—art drawing-rooms, softly shaded at midnight.” This was home,—his home! One born to such things might never appreciate them as Nathan could appreciate them now.
He moved across. From the carved black cherry box on the end of the reading table he found a Havana. His evening paper was there also. He picked up the paper and went round the divan. He sank down before the fire, but after lighting the cigar with all the ceremony of a priest kindling a sacred altar flame, he did not read.
The wind rose and drew the flames higher into the deep, broad flue. Somewhere out on the Avenue rose the gear-clack and purr of a ’bus. It was a wild, melancholy night outside. It would rain or snow before morning. But wind nor weather had no part or parcel with that home, inside. The room might have been in a castle in Spain for all the drear outside weather had to do with its comfort. The man felt with an overwhelming emotion that he had reached a safe harbor,—the hinterland of peace.
Madelaine had been overseeing bedtime rites in the nursery.Nathan’s cigar had scarcely an inch of finely powdered ash before he heard his wife’s step on the stair. As though he had never been in the room before, as though it were all a dream, he turned his head as she came across.
She had put off her dinner frock and was clothed now in silken lingerie—soft, trailing, beautiful things that accentuated her height and perfect figure. Like a cameo against ebony she fitted into that room; had she not been its creator? She paused and adjusted her hair. Beautiful hands they were, that gleamed white and deft in the half-light,—slender, characterful hands for taste and resolute purpose.
“Junior was a perfect dear about going to bed,” she remarked as she gave her tresses a final pat and turned toward her husband. “I’ll flatter your conceit enough, Mr. Man, to say that he grows more like his dad every day.”
Her voice was vibrant and mellow, like the room and the house. Queer how thoughts enter a man’s mind. Nathan could not help contrasting Madelaine’s ordering of her home and child with Milly’s. Milly—given even the same setting—would have had books, papers, interrupted sewing, baby’s clothing—oh, damn Milly. A vast sense of fulfillment welled up in Nathan’s throat. It veiled his vision for a moment. What if he had missed Madelaine that morning on the Hill Top?
Madelaine saw her husband was pensive. She drew a low cushion across before Nathan could get it for her. She sank down at his feet, and with a faint expression of amusement, her dark eyes fastened on the flames. She remained that way for a time, then leaned her head over against the man’s knee. Nathan’s hand stole down and smoothed her hair.
“Happy, dear?” she asked, as she had asked a thousand nights.
“I’m very happy, Madelaine,” he said huskily, like a boy.
“It pleases me to have you say that,” was the woman’s comment.
“At the door, a few moments ago, I had to stand for a time and ‘drink in’ my ‘art drawing-room softly shaded at midnight.’ This sort of thing was what I’d dreamed of, so long, it—well, it hurt. Even now it hurts. But it’s a sweet hurt. That’s the ‘hick’ in me, I suppose. I can’t get over it.”
Madelaine smiled, a bit sadly. Reaching up, she drewthe hand despoiling her hair down beside her cheek and patted it. (Milly would have reminded him curtly that he was “mussing her” or asked him if he thought she could do her hair a dozen times a day just for him to yank out of place—oh, damn Milly!)
“Nathan, dear,” the wife whispered, calm eyes looking deep in the flames, “pride in one’s home—appreciation of the efforts of loved ones to please, is never provincial; neither should a lifelong hunger for beautiful things hurt. I say that, Nathan, and yet you make me confess that you’ve not been alone in that hunger; you haven’t been the only one who has come into a heritage of such things, to know that sweet hurt. And remember too, dear, without earthly shadows we see no high lights. It’s the wealth of life to measure our happiness at last by the price attainment has cost us.”
“My Girl the Fairies Brought!” whispered Nathan, after a time. “I never want to think of her as coming from anywhere else. There still are fairies.”
Madelaine arose at the end of a half-hour, despite her husband’s protest.
“I’m only going above stairs to get an envelope, dear. It holds two pieces of brown mapping with a strip of newspaper pasted upon them. I want you to take them to an art store when you go down to the office in the morning. Have the slip of news-print remapped and put in a copper frame. It must hang over my writing desk—permanently.”
“Newsprint? Copper frame? What’s the idea?”
“I want my Rosary out in sight, where I can look upon it constantly.”
She rumpled his hair. Then she leaned over the back of the divan. Her delicate lips were very close. He did.
As I draw this intimate biography to a close, they are sleeping in my house, two doors down this upper hallway from my study. Nathan came to Paris this week-end tovisit his home office about business in England next month. He made a motor-trip of it and brought Madelaine, Nathan Junior and Junior’s nurse.
Mary Ann gave a dinner for them to-night. Many of our friends among the Preston-Hill set, as our summer colony is known, were invited, notable among them Mrs. Percival Mosely. The Moselys have lately bought a summer place here in Paris at the instigation of the Thornes.
Mary Ann’s dinner was very much of a success. It was aided toward that end by Madelaine,—mightily so.
A score of times to-night I caught myself staring rudely at Nathan’s wife. With smashing beauty of face, figure and gown, and a personal charm beyond all clumsy male adjectives, she kept that table onqui vivewith herbon motsand delicious repartee—eyes shining, cheeks flushed, ruby lips sparkling—and my cellar is not stocked with anything but pumpkins and last season’s peach preserve, either. And the pride and happiness on her husband’s face was entirely pardonable and heart-mellowing.
I would conclude with Mrs. Mosely’s remark to Mary Ann at the door. Naturally Mrs. Mosely is a comparative stranger to Paris.
“I’ve had a truly wonderful evening,” she cried, in her smooth onyx voice, “and I’m especially grateful for being placed beside that young Mr. Forge at dinner. I met him once in New York but really had no opportunity to make his acquaintance closely. Why, he told me more about Russia and Russian art than I’ve learned in eleven summers abroad. And as for poetry—he spoke of that new book that’s causing such a sensation in New York: ‘Life Lyrics of a Tanner’, as though he might have written it himself. I should have liked to have known his parents. Truly, they must have been most remarkable people. Why, I haven’t met such a well-informed, intelligent, perfectly poised and smoothly polished young fellow in the last dozen years. I think he’s perfectly charming!”
The “Life Lyrics of a Tanner!” It’s a great book. An autographed copy lies here upon my desk, weighing down my high pile of manuscript. Pity it was published anonymously!
For the tanner isn’t old Caleb Gridley. I’ll tell the world he isn’t. And that’s not army slang, either.
“It is a chapter out of American life, a vital and significant chapter,and ably written.”—Baltimore Sun.
“It is a chapter out of American life, a vital and significant chapter,and ably written.”—Baltimore Sun.
“It is a chapter out of American life, a vital and significant chapter,
and ably written.”—Baltimore Sun.
THE GREATER GLORY
THE GREATER GLORY
By WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEYWith frontispiece by Norman Price.12mo. Cloth. 376 pages.
By WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEYWith frontispiece by Norman Price.12mo. Cloth. 376 pages.
By WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEY
With frontispiece by Norman Price.
12mo. Cloth. 376 pages.
“It is a human interest story, written by the wise old editor himself in his familiar, colloquial style, with a touch of humor here, and a touch of pathos there, to move the sentimental reader. Throughout, there is the warmth of human understanding of the man who has studied his fellow men intimately, for a long time, and who has drawn from that study a gentle optimism.”—Boston Transcript.
“‘The Greater Glory’ is pure gold in the literary field, and it will endure. When an anthology of truly American novels is compiled, this is our nomination.”—St. Louis Star.
“‘The Greater Glory’ is decidedly worth reading. It has a robustness and a genial warmth that are too seldom discovered in the fiction of our age.”—The Boston Post.
“A novel so compelling in its challenge, so convincing in its recital and so searching in its analysis that it stands in the first rank of the books of the year.”—Boston Herald.
“He has produced one of the most readable and enjoyable stories of the year—a story of genuine human interest told with a gentle heart warming optimism and a kindly spirit of appreciation of his neighbors and spiced with appealing humor.”—New Haven Journal Courier.
LITTLE, BROWN & CO.,Publishers34 Beacon Street, Boston
LITTLE, BROWN & CO.,Publishers34 Beacon Street, Boston
LITTLE, BROWN & CO.,Publishers
34 Beacon Street, Boston
Transcriber’s Notes:Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.Typographical errors were silently corrected.Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.