CHAPTER XVIII
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, whatwereyou 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."