Chapter 5
THAT afternoon when at half-past four he stepped out on the street again, his long lean face was quite without expression. But it was not sallow. It was very white.
He walked straight before him for a step or two, stopped short and stared fixedly into the nearest show-window, one of Jim McCarthy’s achievements.
Mrs. Prouty happened to stand there too. She was looking at a two-hundred-dollar fur coat as tragically as though it were the Pearly Gates and she sinking to Gehenna. She dreamed at night about that fur coat. She wanted it so that she could think of little else. Unlike Mrs. Merritt, she had no resources of fine old Paisley shawls to fall back on.
She looked up now, saw who had come to a stop beside her, and said, with the professional cordiality of a rector’s wife, “Oh, how do youdo, Mr. Knapp,” and was not at all surprised when he did not answer or notice that she was there. Lester Knapp was notoriously absent-minded. It was one of his queer trying ways. He had so many. Poor Mrs. Knapp! But how brave she was about it. It was splendid to see a woman so loyal to a husbandwho deserved it so little. She looked sideways at him, forgetting for an instant her heartache over the coat. Mercy! What a sickly-looking man! Bent shoulders, hollow chest, ashy-gray skin ... no physique at all. And the father of a family! Such men ought not to be allowed to have children.
The coat caught her eye again, with its basilisk fascination. She sighed and stepped into the store to ask to see it again, although she knew it was as far out of her reach as a diamond tiara. To handle its soft richness made her sick with desire, but she couldn’t keep away from it when she was downtown.
Her moving away startled Lester from his horrified gaze on nothingness, and he moved on with a jerky, galvanized gait like a man walking for the first time after a sickness.
He had lost his job. He had been fired. At the end of the month there would be no money at all to keep things going, not even the little they had always had.
Was it the earth he was treading, solid earth? It seemed to sway up and down under him till he was giddy. Hewasgiddy. He was going to faint away. Oh, that would be the last disgrace. To faint away on the street because he had lost his job. The world began to whirl around before his eyes, to turn black. He caught at a tree.
For an instant his eyes were blurred, his earsrang loudly; and then with racking pains, consciousness began to come back to him. He still stood there, his arm still flung around the tree. He had not fainted.
In the pause while he fought inwardly for strength to go on, when every step seemed to plunge him more deeply into the black pit of despair, he was conscious of a steady voice, saying something in his ear—or was it inside his head? The street was quite empty. It must be in his head. How plainly he heard it—another one of those tags of poetry which haunted him....
“But make no sojourn in thy outgoing,For haply it may beThat when thy feet return at eveningDeath shall come in with thee.”
“But make no sojourn in thy outgoing,For haply it may beThat when thy feet return at eveningDeath shall come in with thee.”
“But make no sojourn in thy outgoing,
For haply it may be
That when thy feet return at evening
Death shall come in with thee.”
At once it was as though strong wine had been held to his lips, as though he had drunk a great draught of vigor. His eye cleared, his heart leaped up, he started forward with a quick firm step.
“When thy feet return at eveningDeath shall come in with thee.”
“When thy feet return at eveningDeath shall come in with thee.”
“When thy feet return at evening
Death shall come in with thee.”
There was no need to despair. He was not helplessly trapped. There was a way out. A glorious way! The best way all around. The rightness of it blazed on him from every point as he hurriedup the street. It meant for the children that at last he would be able to give them money, real money, just like any father. There would be not only the ten thousand dollars from his insurance policy but five thousand at least for the house and lot. He had been offered that the other day. Actual cash. And not only actual cash, but emancipation from the blighting influence of a futile and despised father.
The children didn’t despise him yet, but they would soon, of course. Everybody did. And Eva never lost a chance to bring home to them with silent bitterness the fact of their father’s utter worthlessness. Not that he blamed her, poor ambitious Eva, caught so young by the senses, and rewarded by such a blank as he!
And what a glorious thing for Eva—freedom from the dead weight of an unsuccessful husband whom she had to pretend to put up with. An easier life for Eva all around. She would sell the house—Evawould probably get more than five thousand dollars for it!—and with that and the insurance money would move back to her parents’ big empty village home in Brandville as the lonely old people had so many times begged her to do. People lived for next to nothing in those country towns; and as a widow she could accept the proffered help from her prosperous store-keeping father which her pride had always made her refuse as a wife.
That’s what it would be for his family; and for himself—Good God! an escape out of hell. Not only had he long ago given up any hope of getting out of life what he wanted for himself,—an opportunity for growth of the only sort he felt himself meant for, but he had long ago seen that he was incapable of giving to Eva and the children anything that anybody in the world would consider worth having. The only thing he was supposed to give them was money, and he couldn’t make that.
The words sang themselves in his head to a loud triumphant chant:
“For haply it may beThat when thy feet return....”
“For haply it may beThat when thy feet return....”
“For haply it may be
That when thy feet return....”
He was brought up short by a sudden practical obstacle, looming black and foreboding before his impracticality, as life had always loomed before him. How could he manage it? His insurance policy was void in case of suicide, wasn’t it? He would have to contrive somehow to make it look like an accident. He was seared to the bone by the possibility that he might not be able to accomplish even that much against the shrewd business sense of the world which had always defeated him in everything else.
At the idea he burst into strange, loud laughter, the mad sound of which so startled even his ownears that he stopped short, stricken silent, looking apprehensively about him.
But there was nobody in sight, except far at the end of the street, three small figures which seemed to be running towards him and waving their arms. He looked at them stupidly for a moment before he recognized them. His own children! Oh, yes, of course, this was Thursday afternoon, Ladies’ Guild day, one of those precious Thursday hours that were different from all the others in the week. The children often got Stephen’s wraps on and brought him out to meet their father, to “start visiting” that much sooner.
They were nearer now, running, Stephen bouncing between them, holding tightly to their hands. They were all smiling at him with shining welcoming eyes. He heard the sweet shrillness of their twittering voices as they called to him.
The tears rushed to his eyes. They loved him. By God, they loved him, his children did! Yes, perhaps even Stephen a little. And he loved them! He had for them a treasure-store of love beyond imagination’s utmost reach! It washardto leave them.
But so the world willed it. A father who had only love and no money—the sooner he was out of the way the better. He had had that unquestioned axiom ground into every bleeding fiber of his heart.
“Oh, Father, Stevie got on his own coat and buttoned every....”
“Yubbersmineself too,” bragged Stephen breathlessly.
“Teacher says the first half of my play....”
They had come up to him now, clambering up and down him, clawing lovingly at him, all talking at once. What good times they had together Thursday afternoons!
“Father, how does the ‘Walrus and the Carpenter’ go after ‘It seems a shame, the Walrus said’? Henry and I told Stevie that far, but we can’t remember any....”
Lester Knapp swung Stephen up to his shoulder and took Henry and Helen by the hand.
“It seems a shame, the Walrus said,” he began in the deep, mock-heroic voice they all adored,
“To play them such a trickAfter we’ve brought them out so farAnd made them trot so quick.”
“To play them such a trickAfter we’ve brought them out so farAnd made them trot so quick.”
“To play them such a trick
After we’ve brought them out so far
And made them trot so quick.”
“Oh, yes,” cried the older children. “Now we know!” And as they swung along together, they all intoned delightedly,
“The Carpenter said nothingbut‘The butter’s spread too thick!’”
“The Carpenter said nothingbut‘The butter’s spread too thick!’”
“The Carpenter said nothingbut
‘The butter’s spread too thick!’”