Chapter 16
ONE of the most embittering elements of Lester’s old life had been the absence of any leisure when he could really think—consider things consecutively enough to make any sort of sense out of them. He seemed to himself to live perpetually in the mental attitude of a man with his watch in one hand and a heavy valise in the other running for a train which was already overdue. How much value would the judgment of such a man have?
He had always thought he would like to be able to sit right down quietly to think out a thing or two. Now he certainly had all the sitting down quietly that anybody could want. Well, he liked it as much as he had thought he would. And more! He brought under his consideration one after another of the new elements of his new life, holding them firmly under the lens of his intelligence, focusing on them all his attention, and to his astonished relief saw them one by one yield to his analysis, give up their tortured, baffling aspect of mystery and tragedy, and lie open to his view, open to his hand, open to his forward-looking planning. He had neverlived with his family before, he had never seen more of their lives than the inexplicable and tangled loose ends over which they all stumbled wretchedly. Now that for months he had had the opportunity for continuous observation, he perceived that there was nothing so darkly inexplicable, after all, nothing that resisted a patient, resourceful attempt to follow up those loose ends and straighten out some of the knots.
Even in the tragic tangle of Stephen’s strange little nature, Lester felt he had begun to find his way. He had found out this much: Stephen had more vitality than all the rest of them put together (except Eva, of course). And when it did not find free outlet it strangled and poisoned him, made him temporarily insane, in the literal sense of the word, like a strong masterful man shut up by an accident deep in a coal-mine, who might fall insanely to work with his bare hands to claw away the obstructing masses of dead, brute matter that kept him from the light of day! That was what Stephen made him think of; that was, so Lester divined, the meaning of the wild, fierce flame in Stephen’s eyes which had always so shocked and grieved them. They were of another breed, the kind who would sit down patiently and resignedly to die, not fight till the last minute with bleeding hands.
All but Eva—oh, poor darling Eva! How muchbetter Lester understood his wife after those few months of observing her in a life that suited her than after fourteen years of seeing her grimly and heroically enduring a life that did not. Was this Eva the same as the old one? This Eva who came in every evening tired, physically tired as he had never seen her, but appeased, satisfied, fulfilled, having poured out in work she loved the furious splendor of her vigor.
His heart ached with remorse as he thought of the life to which he had condemned her. Why, like Stephen, she had been buried alive in a shaft deep under the earth, and she had not even had Stephen’s poor passionate outlet of misdirected fury. What she thought was her duty had held her bound fast in a death-like silence and passivity. He remembered the somber, taciturn, self-contained woman who had sat opposite him, year after year, at the supper-table. Could that be the same Eva who now, evening after evening, made them all gay with her accounts of the humors of her profession; who could take off a fussy customer so to the life that even Stephen laughed; who could talk with such inspired animation of the variations of fashion that even he listened, deadly as was his hatred for fashion and all that it stood for! He had never even suspected that Eva had this jolly sense of humor! Could it be the same Eva who so briskly dealt the cards aroundevery evening and took up her hand with such interest?
Those evenings of whist had been an inspiration of his, in answer to two questions he had set himself: What could he invent that would keep Eva’s mind off the housekeeping in the evenings? And what could he and Eva and the children do together, which they would all really and truly enjoy—what was some natural manner in which to make a civilized contact between the two generations and the widely differing temperaments? It was delightful to him to see how Eva enjoyed it, how she liked to win (just think of her caring to win! How young in nature she remained! She made him feel like Methuselah!). How cheerily and heartily she coached Henry along, how the children admired her skill and luck, and how she enjoyed their admiration.
Heavens! How unhappy she must have been before, like a Titan forced to tend a miniature garden; forced to turn the great flood of that inherited, specialized ability of hers into the tiny shallow channels of the infinitely minute detail of child-care; forced, day after day, hour by hour, minute by minute, with no respite, into a life-and-death closeness of contact with the raw, unfinished personalities of the children, from which her own ripe maturity recoiled in an ever-renewed impatience. Eva alwayshated anything unfinished! And nothing around her ever stayed unfinished very long. How she put through any job she undertook! She had sat up all one night to finish that sofa she had so wonderfully refurbished.
But you couldn’t put through the job of bringing up children. No amount of energy on your part, no, not if you sat up all night every night of your life, could hurry by a single instant the slow unfolding from within of a child’s nature....
Eva dropped out of Lester’s mind whenever he thought of this, and he was all flooded with the sweet, early-morning light that shone from his daughter’s childhood. He always felt like taking off his hat when he thought of Helen.
Sometimes when they were working together and Helen was moved to lift the curtain shyly and let him look at her heart, he held his breath before the revelation of the strange, transparent whiteness of her thoughts. That was the vision before which the greatest of the poets had prostrated themselves. And yet the best that had been done by the greatest of them was only a faint shimmer from the distant shrine. He understood now how Blake, all his life-long, had been shaken when he thought of children, “Thousands of little boys and girls, raising their innocent hands.” Through all the leaping, furious, prophetic power of Blake, there ran,like a sun-flooded stream, this passion of loving reverence for little girls and boys.
And under his quaintly formal rhymed words, how Wordsworth’s deep heart had melted into the same beatitude, “... that I almost received her heart into my own.” “Into my own!” Helen’s father knew now how literally a man could feel that about a little girl.
And yet this did not mean that he thought Helen was perfect. No, poor child, with her too flexible mind, her too sensitive nerves, her lack of power and courage, Helen needed all the help she could get if she were not to be totally undone by life. He knew a thing or two about how ruthless life is to any one who lacks power and courage! Helen must learn how to stand up to things and not lie down and give up. He would find ways to teach her ... yes, he knew wincingly what sarcastic people would ask, “How could he teach her what he had never learned himself?” But the fact that he had never learned himself was the very reason for his understanding the dire need for it. Perhaps it might come from athletics. She must learn to play on a team, how to take rough, careless, good-natured knocks, and return them and pass on her way. As soon as he could get about on crutches, somehow—perhaps he would go to the physical-training teacher at school and have a talk about Helen. Perhaps hecould get up an outdoor basket-ball team of the children here on the street. He had plans, all sorts of plans. Above all, Helen must go to college. It wasn’t so much, going to college; he had no illusions about it. For a strong personality like Stephen’s it might very well not be worth while. But for a bookish, sensitive, complicated nature like Helen’s, the more her intelligence was shaped and pointed and sharpened and straightened out, the better. She would need it all to cope with herself. She was not one for whom action, any action provided it were violent enough, would suffice.
Would it for Henry? How about Henry, anyhow? How everybody always left Henry out! That was because there wasn’t anything unusual about the nice little boy. He was a nice little boy, and if he grew to his full stature, he would be a nice man, a good citizen, a good husband. No leader of men, but a faithful common soldier—well, perhaps a sergeant—in the great army of humanity.
But he had a right to his own life, didn’t he, even if he weren’t unusual? You didn’t want everybody to be unusual. There were moods in which Lester Knapp took the greatest comfort in Henry’s being just like anybody else. So much the better for him! For everybody! There would never be tragedy in his life, no thwarted, futile struggling against an organization of things that did not fit him. At times,too, there was something poignant to Lester about Henry’s patient, unrebellious attitude. He never fought to get what he wanted. He stood back, took what others left, and with a touching, unconscious resignation, made the best of it. All the more reason for Henry’s father to stand up for him, to think of how to get him more of what he wanted.
He began to plan for Henry now. What would Henry naturally want? Just what any little boy wanted. The recipe was well known: Playmates of his own age, a “gang”; some kind of shack in the woods to play pirate; games, lots and lots of games; a pet of his own; perhaps a job at which he could earn real money of his own to spend on a baseball mitt or a bicycle.
Why, Henry didn’t have a single one of those things, not one. And he was eleven years old.
That afternoon when the children came home, he waited till they had unpacked their minds of the school-news, and then asked casually, “Say, Henry, wouldn’t you like to have a puppy to bring up? I used to think the world of my dog when I was your age.”
A quick startled look passed between Henry and Helen, a look rather wild with the unexpectedness of their father’s question. Henry flushed veryred and looked down dumbly at his piece of bread and butter.
Helen spoke for him, placatingly, “You see, Father ... you see ... Mother never wanted Henry to ... but ... well, Henryhasa puppy, sort of.”
Seeing nothing but expectant interest in her father’s face, she went on, “Old Mrs. Hennessy’s Laura had puppies about six weeks ago, and Mrs. Hennessy said Henry could have one. Henry always did want one,so. And Henry”—her accent was increasingly apologetic—“Henry sort of did pick out one for his. It’s white with black spots. Awfully cunning. Noontimes Henry runs over from school to the Hennessys’ to play with it. Mrs. Hennessy and Laura are weaning the puppies now. He’s beginning to lap milk. Oh, Father, haven’t they got the darlingest little red tongues! Henry’s named him Rex. Mrs. Hennessy said Henry could keep it at her house, because Mother....”
A new possibility opened before her like the horizon lifting, “Oh,Father, do you suppose she would let Henry have itnow?”
The “now” referred to the change in Mother which they all noticed, but never mentioned, even in so distant a manner as this “now.” It had slipped out in Helen’s excitement. Lester took no notice of it.
“Do you s’pose shewould?” asked Henry, in an agitated voice. He was now quite pale.
“Heavens, what a sensitive little chap he is!” thought Lester. “How worked up he does get over little things.” Aloud he said, “Well, she might. Let’s ask her this evening.”
So they did. She came in rather late and pretty tired. Her feet ached a good deal by nighttime, now it was warm weather, and Helen usually had a good hot bath waiting for her when she came. Mother kissed her and said what a comfort she was before shutting the door of the bathroom. Helen jumped happily downstairs, two steps at a time, to help Father get the supper on.
It was steaming on the table when Mother came down in the pretty, loose, red-silk house-dress which she’d bought at the store at such a bargain—fornothing, as she said. She looked relaxed and quiet and said she was starved and so glad they had veal cutlets. It was a joy to watch Mother eat after her day’s work.
They never washed the dishes in the evenings now, because, Mother getting her breakfast downtown, it was no matterhowthe kitchen looked in the morning. Henry and Helen piled them on the new wheeled tray which Mr. Willing had so kindly sent up, pushed that into the kitchen and put them to soak, while Father and Mother got Stevie to bedand lighted the little bedside candle, at which Stephen loved to stare himself to sleep.
Then they hurried into the living-room for the evening rubber of whist. Mother’s luck was especially good that evening, a fact in which they all took an innocent satisfaction. Mother liked it when her luck was good.
Then, all of a sudden, the opening was there, and Father was taking advantage of it in a masterful way. Mother said something about the two little Willing girls who had been down at the store that day with their dog, and Father put in at once, “By the way, Eva, old Mrs. Hennessy wants to give Henry one of a litter of puppies her dog has. What would you say? It’s spring-time. It could be out of doors mostly.” (How they admired him for being able to speak so casually. “By the way, Eva....” He was wonderful. Under the table Helen’s hand squeezed Henry’s hard.)
Mrs. Knapp still had before her eyes the picture of the two fashionably dressed children and their fashionably accoutred dog with his studded collar and harness and the bright tan braided leather of his leash. She had never thought of dogs in terms of smartness before. “He’d make a lot of trouble for you,” she said, looking over at her husband.
“Oh, I’d manage all right. I like dogs,” said Lester carelessly.
“You’d have to promise, Henry, to keep him out of this room. I don’t want dog-hairs all over everything.” (It was the old formula, but not pronounced with the old conviction. After all she would not be there to see. She was often surprised that she worried so little about the looks of the house nowadays.)
“Oh, I’d never let him inhere,” promised Henry in a strangled voice.
“Well ...” said his mother. She looked down at the cards in her hand.
There was a silence.
“Who took that last trick?” she asked.
“You did,” said her husband (although he had).
They began to play again.
It had been as easy as that.
Lester had quite forgotten about the dog that evening as he pottered around the kitchen over some last tasks. He heard the bathroom door shut and knew that Eva had gone in for her evening toilet. At once afterwards his ear caught the stealthy sound of bare feet on the stairway. He turned his head towards the door and saw Henry come hurrying in on tiptoe.
He opened his lips to make some joking inquiry about whatever it could be that kept Henry up so late, but the expression on the child’s face silencedhim. Good heavens! Had he cared so much as that about owning a dog!
Henry came up to him without a word and leaning over the wheel of the invalid-chair, put his arms around his father’s neck, leaning his cheek against his father’s shoulder.
“Oh,Father!” he said in a whisper, with a long, tremulous breath. He tightened his arms closer and closer, as though he could never stop.
Lester patted the little boy’s back silently. He was thinking, “I hope he’ll come like this to tell me when he’s in love and has been accepted. I don’t believe he’ll be any more stirred up.” The child’s body quivered against his breast.
After a time Lester said quietly, “Better get to bed, old man. You’ll take cold, with your bare feet.”
Docilely and silently Henry went back upstairs to bed.