Chapter 21

ONE of the interests of life for Lester was the uncertainty about who was to be his mental companion for any given day. It seemed to be something over which he had no control. Sometimes he had thought it might be the weather which settled the matter. Not infrequently his first early-morning look at the world told him with which great spirit he was to live that day. A clear, breezy, bird-twittering dawn after rain meant Christina Rossetti’s child-poems. A soft gray down-pour of warm rain, varnishing the grass to brilliance and beating down on the earth with a roll of muted drum-notes, always brought Hardy to his mind. Golden sun spilled in floods over the new green of the quivering young leaves meant Shelley. And Browning was for days when the sun rose rich and many-colored out of confused masses of turbid clouds.

But it was not always the weather. Sometimes as he opened his eyes, his chosen comrade for the day was there beside him before he had taken in anything more of the visible world than the white vacancy of the ceiling with those familiar blemishes, which were by this time a part of his brain. He did not always welcome the companion of the day, especiallywhen the unseen spirit but repeated and intensified the color of his own temperament, from which he was so glad to escape by following the trumpets and fanfare of a temperament more brightly, more vividly alive. But he had found it was of little use to try to alter the day’s destiny. He could indeed, easily enough, bring to mind mechanically many others of the blessed company of articulate human beings who sang for him what he could never say for himself; but he could hear, really hear in his deep heart’s core, nothing but the appointed voice.

So he resigned himself to a brooding, astringent day when he woke up one morning and even before he opened his eyes, heard,

“But ‘falling, falling, falling’ there’s your song,The cradle song that sings you to the grave.”

“But ‘falling, falling, falling’ there’s your song,

The cradle song that sings you to the grave.”

That was no longer meant for him, Lester reflected, as he struggled with the fatiguing, humiliating problem of getting himself dressed without help. He had spent years in falling, falling, falling,—and, tiring of it, had fallen once for all,—fallen all anybody could fall, so completely that there was no more to say about it. That job was done.

With a straining pull on his arms, he managed to swing and claw himself into his wheel chair, andsat quiet for a moment to get his breath. Whoever would think that dead human legs could be so infernally hard to get from one place to another! They seemed to weigh more than all the rest of his body put together, he thought, as he lifted one with both hands and changed it to an easier position.

He sat panting, losing for an instant his firmly held self-control, succumbing to what was always near the surface, a shamed horror of his mutilated, strengthless body. It came upon him that day with such poisonous violence that he was alarmed and aroused himself to resist.

“The thing to remember,” he told himself sternly and contemptuously, “is that it concerns only me, and what concerns me is not of the slightest importance. I’m done for, was really done for, long ago. Nothing that can happen to me matters now.” He heard as if it were a wistful voice saying,

“But neither parted roads, nor cent per centMay starve quite out the child that lives in us,The Child that is the Man, the Mystery.”

“But neither parted roads, nor cent per cent

May starve quite out the child that lives in us,

The Child that is the Man, the Mystery.”

And he replied bitterly to this, “That’s all you know about it! Cent per cent can starve it dead, dead! It turned the trick for me, all right.”

“Well, no funeral orations over it anyhow,” hetold himself. “If it got starved, that’s a sign it deserved to starve, that it didn’t have the necessary pep to hustle around and get its food.

“All that can be annihilated must be annihilatedThat the children of Jerusalem may be saved from slavery.”

“All that can be annihilated must be annihilated

That the children of Jerusalem may be saved from slavery.”

But he knew that he did not really believe this clean, trenchant ruthlessness, and cursed himself out for the sniveling sentimentality which he could not kill.

Then Stephen turned over and opened his eyes. Why, there was Father up and dressed already! He scrambled hastily to his knees, “You didn’t lace your shoes, did you?” he cried roughly and threateningly. That was a service to Father which he had taken for his very own. He would have killed Henry or Helen if they had dared to do it.

“No, old man, I didn’t lace my shoes,” said Father, smiling at him, “for the very good reason that I can’t. I couldn’t get along without the services of my valet.”

Stephen looked relieved, slid out of bed, sat down on the floor and began to pull the laces up. Once he looked up at his father and smiled. He loved to do this for Father.

That evening was the second time in succession that Evangeline went to bed directly after supper. She said she was trying to stave off an attack of influenza with extra sleep and doses of quinine. Lester and the children did not play whist when Mother was not there, neither when she was tired and went to bed early nor when she stayed down in the store evenings, taking stock or working over newly arrived goods with Mr. and Mrs. Willing. Whist was connected with Mother, and although she often told them they need not lose the evenings when she could not be there, and would enjoy playing with dummy for a change, they never got out the cards unless she was with them.

Father usually read aloud to them on such evenings, and they wouldn’t have missed that for anything. That evening he read a rhymed funny story about a farmer who got blown away from his barn one winter night, and, with his lantern waving, slid two miles down the mountain before he could stop himself. This was a great favorite of theirs and made them laugh harder every time they heard it.

“Sometimes he came with arms outspreadLike wings, revolving in the sceneUpon his longer axis andWith no small dignity of mien.Faster or slower as he chanced,Sitting or standing as he chose,According as he feared to riskHis neck, or thought to spare his clothes.”

“Sometimes he came with arms outspread

Like wings, revolving in the scene

Upon his longer axis and

With no small dignity of mien.

Faster or slower as he chanced,

Sitting or standing as he chose,

According as he feared to risk

His neck, or thought to spare his clothes.”

And Helen liked the end, too, that Father always brought out with a special accent, the way the farmer didn’t give up. As he started silently and doggedly back the long way around, miles and miles in the cold, she walked along beside him, sharing something of his quiet resistance to Fate.Thatwas the way to do when you’d slid all out of the way you wanted to go!

Father read another one after that about a bonfire, which, although she did not quite understand it all, always made Helen tremble with excitement. Henry did not understand any of it and did not try to. It never bothered him now when he did not understand the poems Father read to Helen. He just stopped listening and played with his puppy’s ear, and lost himself in the warm, soft heaviness of the puppy’s little sprawling body on his knees. Sometimes he put his face lovingly down on the little dog’s head, his heart melting with tenderness. He needed no poetry out of a book.

“It will have roared first and mixed sparks with stars,And sweeping round it with a flaming sword,Made the dim trees stand back in wider circles.”

“It will have roared first and mixed sparks with stars,

And sweeping round it with a flaming sword,

Made the dim trees stand back in wider circles.”

“Oh,” cried Helen, loving the sound of the words as Henry loved his puppy, “isn’t that just scrumptious!”

“The breezes were so spent with winter blowingThey seemed to fail the bluebirds under themShort of the perch their languid flight was towards;And my flame made a pinnacle to heaven.”

“The breezes were so spent with winter blowing

They seemed to fail the bluebirds under them

Short of the perch their languid flight was towards;

And my flame made a pinnacle to heaven.”

“Oh,Father,” said Helen, wriggling on her chair with delight, “isn’t it too lovely!” And then, in a passion of longing, “Oh, IwishI could write like that!”

Something in the expression of her father’s face struck her. She was only thirteen, but an older intuition from her coming womanhood made her say impulsively, with all her heart, “Father, you love it so ... why don’tyou... didn’t you ever try to write poetry, too?”

To her confusion, a slow, deep flush mounted all over her father’s face. He looked down at the book in silence.

Helen was as horrified as if she had flung open the door of a secret sanctuary in a temple. She jumped up from the sofa, and not understanding her father, nor herself, nor what she was doing, “Oh, Father, dear,” she murmured, her arms around his neck.

Henry and his puppy looked up at them sleepily. “Is it bedtime?” asked Henry.

Helen went to sleep that night, still feeling the great hug Father had given her. She had never felt Father love her so much before.

Downstairs before he went to bed her father, turning over the pages of a book, was reading,

“And nothing to look backward to with pride,And nothing to look forward to with hope.”

“And nothing to look backward to with pride,

And nothing to look forward to with hope.”

“Come, come!” he said to himself. “Terence, this is stupid stuff, you eat your victuals fast enough. We’ll have to call this day one of our failures. I’d better get it over with and start another.” His heart was still bleeding to the old wound he had thought healed and forgotten for years, which Helen’s sudden question had torn open. Good Heavens, weren’t you safe from those old buried griefs until you were actually under the sod?

And yet mingled with the old bitterness was a new sweetness, Helen’s sympathy, Helen’s understanding. It had never occurred to him before that children could give something as well as take all—the all he was so thankful to give them. Why, he thought wistfully, Helen might be the companion he had never had. He shook his head. No, that would not be fair to her. No dead-hand business! She mustfind her companions in her own generation. He must be ready to stand aside and let her pass on when the time came. That new sweetness was offered to him only that he might learn to make another renunciation.

He looked about him to see if there was anything to be done for the house before he went to bed. “Shall I close that window over there?” he thought to himself. “No, the night is warm. It will give us more air.”

He wheeled himself to the closed door of the dining-room, opened it and perceived that the wind was blowing hard from the other direction, for a strong draught instantly sucked past him between the open window back of him and the open window at the head of Stephen’s bed. He felt the gust and saw the long, light curtain curl eddying out towards him over the flicker of Stephen’s bedside candle.

It caught in an instant. It flared up like gun-cotton, all over its surface. It came dropping down ... horribly dropping down towards Stephen’s unconscious, upturned face ... flames on that tender flesh!

Stephen’s father found himself standing by the bed, snatching the curtain to one side, crushing out the flames between his hands. His wheel chair still stood by the open door.

The draught between the two open windows now blew out the candle abruptly. In the darkness the door slammed shut with a loud report.

But the room was not dark to Lester. As actually as he had seen and felt the burst of flame from the curtain, he now felt himself flare up in physical ecstasy to be standing on his own feet, to know that he had taken a dozen steps, to know that he was no longer a half-man, a mutilated wreck from whom normal people averted their eyes in what they called pity but what was really contempt and disgust.

He was like a man who has been shut in a cage too low for him to stand, who has crouched and stooped and bowed his shoulders, and who suddenly is set free to rise to his full stature, to throw his arms up over his head. The relief from oppression was as rending as a pain. It was a thousand times more joyful than any joy he had ever known. His self, his ego, savagely, grimly, harshly beaten down as it had been, sprang up with an exultant yell.

The flame of its exultation flared up like gun-cotton, as the curtain had flared.

And died down as quickly, crushed and ground to blackness between giant hands that snatched it to one side as it dropped down towards Stephen’s unconscious upturned face ... flames on that tender flesh....

Lester knew nothing but that there was blackness within and without him. He was lying fully dressed across the foot of his bed. His face was buried in the bedclothes, but it was no blacker there than in the room ... in his heart.

What made it so black? He did not know. He was beyond thought. He was nothing but wild, quivering apprehension, as he had been in the instant when, poised on the icy roof, he had turned to hurl himself down into the void. The terror of that instant was with him again. What fall was before him now?

He went a little insane as he lay there on the bed. He seemed to himself to be falling, as he had fallen so many times during his convalescence, endlessly, endlessly, in a dread that grew worse because now he knew what unutterable anguish awaited him. He shuddered, grasped the blanket and tore at it savagely, wondering madly what it was ... what it was ... what it was....

He came to himself with a great start that shook him, that shook the bed so that it rattled in the dark silent room.

He sat up and wiped his face that was dripping wet.

Now what? His mind was lucid. He was not falling, he was on his bed, in his room, with Stephensleeping beside him in the darkness. And he knew now that he could get well.

Well, what was he to do, now that he knew he could get well?

He knew beforehand that there was nothing he could do. Life had once more cast him out from the organization of things.

Could he do any better than before his miserable, poorly done, detested work? Could he hate it any less? No, he would hate it a thousand times more now that he knew that it was not only a collaboration with materialism fatly triumphant, but that it kept him from his real work, vital, living, creative work, work he could do as no one else could, work that meant the salvation of his own children. Could he sit again sunk in that treacherous bog of slavery to possessions, doing his share of beckoning unsuspecting women into it ... and all the time know that perhaps at that very minute Helen was repressing timidly some sweet shy impulse that would fester in her heart when it might have blossomed into fragrance in the sun? It would drive him mad to see again in Helen’s eyes that old stupid, crushed expression of self-distrustful discouragement which he had always thought was the natural expression of her nature.

He thought of Henry, leaping and running with his dog, both of them casting off sparkling rays of youth as they capered. He thought of Henry ghastly white, shrunken, emptied of vitality, as he lay on the bed that last evening of the old life, in the condition which they had all thought was the inevitable one for Henry.

And Eva.... He gave a deep groan as he thought of Eva—Eva who loved the work he hated, who took it all simple-heartedly at the solemnly preposterous value that the world put on it—to shut that strong-flying falcon into the barnyard again, to watch her rage, and droop, and tear at her own heart and at the children’s!

Solemnly, out of the darkness, as though it had been Stephen’s voice reciting “The Little Boy Lost” to him, he heard,

“Father, father, where are you going?Oh, do not walk so fast.Speak, father, speak to your little boyOr else I shall be lost.”

“Father, father, where are you going?

Oh, do not walk so fast.

Speak, father, speak to your little boy

Or else I shall be lost.”

And there was Stephen....

Lester had no words for what the name meant to him now—nothing but a great aching sorrow into which he sank helplessly, letting its black waves close over his head.

Presently he struggled up to the air again and looked about him. There must be some way of escape. Anybody but a weakling would invent some way to save them all. He must leave nothing unthought of, he must start methodically to make the rounds of the possibilities. He must not lose his head in this hysterical way. He must be a man and master circumstances.

Would it be possible for both of them to work, he and Eva? Other parents did sometimes. The idea was that with the extra money you made you hired somebody to take care of the children. If before his accident any one had dreamed of Eva’s natural gift for business, he would have thought the plan an excellent one. But it was only since his accident that he had had the faintest conception of what “caring for the children” might mean. Now, now that he had lived with the children, now that he had seen how it took all of his attention to make even a beginning of understanding them, how it took all of his intelligence and love to try to give them what they needed, spiritually and mentally ... no!

You could perhaps, if you were very lucky—though it was unlikely in the extreme—it was conceivable that by paying a high cash price you might be able to hire a little intelligence, enough intelligence to give them good material care. But youcould never hire intelligence sharpened by love. In other words you could not hire a parent. And children without parents were orphans.

Whom could they hire? What kind of a person would it be? He tried to think concretely of the possibilities. Why—he gave a sick, horrified laugh—why, very likely some nice old grandmotherly soul like Mrs. Anderson who, so everybody would say, would be just the right person, because she had had so much experience with children. He clenched his hands in a murderous animal-fury at the thought of Stephen’s proud, strong, vital spirit left helpless to the vicious, vindictive meanness of a Mrs. Anderson. And from the outside, coming in late in the afternoon with no first-hand information about what happened during the day, how could he and Eva ever know a Mrs. Anderson from any one else?

Well, perhaps not a Mrs. Anderson. Let him think of the very best that might conceivably be possible. Perhaps a good-natured, young houseworker who would be kind to the children, indulgent, gentle. He thought of the long hours during which he bent his utmost attention on the children to understand them, to see what kind of children they were, to think what they needed most now—not little passing pleasures such as good nature and indulgence would suggest, but real food for what was deepest in them. He thought of how he used hisclose hourly contact with them as a means of looking into their minds and hearts; how he used the work-in-common with them as a scientist conducts an experiment station to accumulate data as material for his intelligence to arrange in order, so that his decisions might be just and far-sighted as well as loving. He thought how in the blessed mental leisure which comes with small mechanical tasks he pored over this data, considered it and reconsidered in the light of some newer evidence—where was now a good-natured young hired girl, let her be ever so indulgent and gentle? “You can’thiresomebody to be a parent for your children!” he thought again, passionately. They are born into the world asking you for bread. If you give them a stone, it were better for you that that stone were hanged about your neck and cast into the sea.

Eva had no bread to give them—he saw that in this Day-of-Judgment hour, and no longer pretended that he did not. Eva had passionate love and devotion to give them, but neither patience nor understanding. There was no sacrifice in the world which she would not joyfully make for her children except to live with them. They had tried that for fourteen dreadful years and knew what it brought them. That complacent unquestioned generalization, “The mother is the natural home-maker”; what a juggernaut it had been in their case! How poor Eva,drugged by the cries of its devotees, had cast herself down under its grinding wheels—and had dragged the children in under with her. It wasn’t because Eva had not tried her best. She had nearly killed herself trying. But she had been like a gifted mathematician set to paint a picture.

And he did have bread for them. He did not pretend he had not. He had found that he was in possession of miraculous loaves which grew larger as he dealt them out. For the first time since his untried youth Lester knew a moment of pride in himself, of satisfaction with something he had done. He thought of Henry, normal, sound, growing as a vigorous young sapling grows. He thought of Helen opening into perfumed blossom like a young fruit tree promising a rich harvest; of Stephen, growing as a strong man grows, purposeful, energetic, rejoicing in his strength, and loving, yes, loving. How good Stephen was to him! That melting upward look of protecting devotion when he had laced up his shoes that morning!

“Father, father, where are you going?Oh, do not walk so fast!”

“Father, father, where are you going?

Oh, do not walk so fast!”

Well, there was the simple, obvious possibility, the natural, right human thing to do ... he could continue to stay at home and make the home, since a home-maker was needed.

He knew this was impossible. The instant he tried to consider it, he knew it was as impossible as to roll away a mountain from his path with his bare hands. He knew that from the beginning of time everything had been arranged to make that impossible. Every unit in the whole of society would join in making it impossible, from the Ladies’ Guild to the children in the public schools. It would be easier for him to commit murder or rob a bank than to give his intelligence where it was most needed, in his own home with his children.

“What is your husband’s business, Mrs. Knapp?”

“He hasn’t any. He stays at home and keeps house.”

“Oh....”

He heard that “Oh!” reverberating infernally down every road he tried.

“My Papa is an insurance agent. What does your Papa do for a living, Helen?”

“He doesn’t do anything. Mother makes the living. Father stays home with us children.”

“Oh, is he sick?”

“No, he’s not sick.”

“Oh....”

He saw Helen, sensitive, defenseless Helen cringing before that gigantic “oh.” He knew that soon Henry with his normal reactions would learn to see that “oh” coming, to hide from it, to avoid his playmatesbecause of it. There was no sense to that “oh”; there had been no sense for generations and generations. It was an exclamation that dated from the cave-age, but it still had power to warp the children’s lives as much as—yes, almost as much as leaving them to a Mrs. Anderson. They would be ashamed of him. He would lose his influence over them. He would be of no use to them.

Over his head Tradition swung a bludgeon he knew he could not parry. He had always guessed at the presence of that Tradition ruling the world, guessed that it hated him, guessed at its real name. He saw it plain now, grinning sardonically high above all the little chattering pretenses of idealism. He knew now what it decreed: that men are in the world to get possessions, to create material things, to sell them, to buy them, to transport them, above all to stimulate to fever-heat the desire for them in all human beings. It decreed that men are of worth in so far as they achieve that sort of material success, and worthless if they do not.

That was the real meaning of the unctuous talk of “service” in the commercial text-books which Eva read so whole-heartedly. They were intended to fix the human attention altogether on the importance of material things; to make women feel that the difference between linen and cotton is of more importance to them than the fine, difficultly drawn,always-varying line between warm human love and lust; to make men feel that more possessions would enlarge their lives ... blasphemy! Blasphemy!

He read as little as possible of the trade-journals which Eva left lying around the house, but the other day in kindling a fire with one his eye had been caught by a passage the phrases of which had fixed themselves in that sensitive verbal memory of his and were not to be dislodged:—“Morally, esthetically, emotionallyandcommercially, America is helped, uplifted, advanced by the efforts of you and me to induce individual Americans first to want and then to acquire more of the finer things of life. Take fine jewelry. It makes the purchaser a better person by its appeal to the emotional and esthetic side of his or her nature.... Desire for the rich and tasteful adornments obtainable at the jewelry store expresses itself in stronger attempts to acquire the means to purchase. This means advancement for America! Should you not, bearing this wonderful thought in mind, be enthused to broaden your contact with the buying public by increasing your distributing....” They wrote that sort of thing by the yard, by the mile! And they were right. That was the real business of life, of course. He had always known it. That was why men who did other things, teachers, or poets, or musicians, or ministers, were so heartily despised by normalpeople. And as for any man who might try to be a parent....

Why, the fanatic feminists were right, after all. Under its greasy camouflage of chivalry, society is really based on a contempt for women’s work in the home. The only women who were paid, either in human respect or in money, were women who gave up their traditional job of creating harmony out of human relationships and did something really useful, bought or sold or created material objects. As for anyman’sgiving his personality to the woman’s work of trying to draw out of children the best there might be in them ... fiddling foolishness! Leave it to the squaws! He was sure that he was the only man who had ever conceived even the possibility of such a lapse from virile self-respect as to do what all women are supposed to do. He knew well enough that other men would feel for such a conception on his part a stupefaction only equaled by their red-blooded scorn.

At this he caught a passing glimpse far below the surface. He knew that it was not only scorn he would arouse, but suspicion and alarm. For an instant he understood why Tradition was so intolerant of the slightest infraction of the respect due to it, why it was ready to tear him and all his into a thousand pieces rather than permit even one variation from its standard. It was because the variationhe had conceived ran counter to the prestige of sacred possessions. Not only was it beneath the dignity of any able-bodied brave to try to show young human beings how to create rich, deep, happy lives without great material possessions, but it was subversive of the whole-hearted worship due to possessions. It was heresy. It must be stopped at all costs. Lester heard the threatening snarl of that unsuspected, unquestioned Tradition, amazed that any one dared so much as to conceive of an attack on it. And he knew that he was not man enough to stand up and resist the bludgeon and the snarl.

He had thought he had experienced all the possible ways in which a man can feel contempt for himself. But there was another depth before him. For—he might as well have the poor merit of being honest about it, and not hide behind Eva and the children—he knew that he could stand that “oh ...” as little as they, that he would turn feebly sour and bitter under it, as he had before, and blame other people for what was his own lack of endurance.

Let him try to imagine it for an instant—a definite instance. If he were once more an able-bodied man what would he feel to have Harvey Bronson drop in and find him making a bed while Eva sold goods?

Good God! Was he such a miserable cur as to let the thought of Harvey Bronson’s sneer stand between him and doing what he knew was best for the children? There they stood, infinitely precious, hungering and thirsting for what he had to give them ... defenseless but for him. Would he stand back and let the opinion of the Ladies’ Guild....

Yes, he would.

That was the kind of miserable cur he was. And now he knew it. He wiped the sweat from his face and ground his teeth together to keep them from chattering.

They were chattering like those of a man cast adrift in a boat with only a broken paddle between him and the roaring leap of a cataract. The roaring was louder and louder in his ears as he felt himself helplessly drifting towards the drop. He had not been willing to look at it, had kept his eyes on the shores which he had tried so vainly to reach, struggling pitifully with his poor broken tool.

Now he gave up and, cowering in a heap, waited dumbly for the crashing downfall—he who had fallen so low, was he to fall again, lower still? He who had thought he had kept nothing at all for himself in life, must he give up now his one living treasure, his self-respect? Could it be that he was thinking—he, Lester Knapp!—of shamming a sickness hedid not have, of trampling his honor deep into the filth of small, daily lies?

The thought carried him with a rush over the wicked gleaming curve at the edge of the abyss ... he was falling ... falling....

There was nothing but a formless horror of yelling whirlpools, which sucked him down....

Presently it was dawn. A faint gray showed at the windows. The blemishes on the ceiling came into view and stalked grimly to their accustomed stand in his brain. The night was over. Stephen lay sleeping peacefully, the harmless, blackened bits of the burned curtain scattered about his bed.

“Father, father, where are you going?Oh, do not walk so fast.Speak, father, speak to....”

“Father, father, where are you going?

Oh, do not walk so fast.

Speak, father, speak to....”

It was not fast he would be walking. Or at all.

A robin chirped sleepily in the maple. It would soon be day. Lester got up, shuffled over to his wheel chair and sat down in it.

After a time he stooped down and unlaced his shoes. Then he wheeled himself over beside Stephen’s bed and waited for the day to come.

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