SOME FREEDOM!
“With a great price ($2.00) obtained I This Freedom!”
“With a great price ($2.00) obtained I This Freedom!”
“With a great price ($2.00) obtained I This Freedom!”
Rosalie’s first impression was that her father owned the world. Extraordinary father! Wonderful father! Wonderful, wonderful father! There he is bounding across a field before a bull. Wonderful bull! There is father. There is the bull. Two theres. One after the other. The bull there after father there. Wonderful theres! Entrancing theres!
Did her mother ever bound before a bull? Never. Her father was the only bounder in the family—except her two brothers. All men were bounders. Wonderful, mysterious, entrancing men! Wonderful, wonderful men!
Mother—how different! Taught all the children until each child was eight, at her knee. “The Child’s Bible,” expurgated, hymns—“I kneed thee every hour.” Various methods of knee-teaching. For “Child’s Bible,”onthe knee, her arm around you. For hymns,atthe knee, your hands behind you. For deportment,acrossthe knee, her hand upraised.
CHAPTER II
School. Head-mistress, Mrs. Impact—ominous name! Second in command, Miss Ouch—natural sequence! Then Miss Keggs—also eponymous, as we shall see.
So she grew up—twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old. In just that order. No twelve, fourteen, thirteen, fifteen, seventeen, sixteen irregularity. A precise arithmetical sequence—forecast of mathematical abilities almost unfeminine.
She is eight years older than when she was nine. Eight added to nine makes—ninety-eight?—No, seventeen. Surely, seventeen. There can be no doubt about it, especially in the case of a young girl like Rosalie. Absurd to doubt it. Seventeen. Be sure of that.
She’s left school! She’s looking for a job! She’s got a job—Simcox boss! She’s still got the job! She hasn’t lost it yet! Simcox dies. Simcox is buried! She’s got another—Sturgiss boss! She’s met a man! She’s kissed the man! She’s married the man! She has one child! She has two children! She has three children! She has no more children! She’s lost them all! Careless! Careless!
What jumps! What leaps! What bounds! How annoying! She’s busted right through the book.
One clutches. Tries to stop her. Can’t. It’s no use. She’s a deluge. She’s a maelstrom. She’s an earthquake. She’s an avalanche. She’s several other things, including a boiling pot. What a life! What a life! Gosh!
One starts again. Simcox—funny little man—walks in jerks—talks in jerks—like one’s style.Le style c’est l’homme.There you are! Simcoxical! One writes Simcociously.
Simcox then—or Simcox now—the phrases are interchangeable—man of letters, very well posted, one may say. Busy all day writing letters to himself, skipping out to put them in the pillar-box, skipping home to receive them from the postman. Whimsical idea. Oh, very! One quite chuckles at having conceived it.
Then Simcox dies—cacoëthes scribendi, complicated with writer’s cramp.
Simcox gone, Sturgiss arrives. “Come with us!” “No!” Coy Rosalie bluffs. “Head clerk—manager—partner—sole owner—Chairmanof Bank of England—Chancellor of Exchequer—anything. Only come with us.”
“Very well, then—manager to start with.”
Her life now, her stage. A chair! A desk—mahogany—huge! Ink-well! Penholders! Paper! Typewriter! Waste-basket! Paste pot! Scissors! Everything and more besides—including glass partitions—think of that! Lombard Street! Trafalgar Square! Pall Mall! Piccadilly! Bond Street! Regent Street! Hyde Park! Kensington Gardens and points west and north!
That’s her stage. Can you beat it?
The War comes. It had her permission. It goes on. She let it. It stops. She was tired of it.
And yet ... one must write one’s story in one’s own way, in spite of one’s habit of prematurely spilling one’s beans. One must tell it all over in detail—but not here—not here—thank God! Not here!
Miss Keggs again—mysteriously, unaccountably called Keggo. Why? We shall see. Rosalie met her. Keggo smiling fixedly. Had evidently been smiling for some time. In a drab street, sad drab. Forlorn drab drabs, like sad drab ghosts drably flickered in andout, itinerant drabs in drab cerements. All drab, except Keggo, who was brilliantly lit up.
Harry Occleve, now. She knew him slightly. She despised him. Tame cat! She hated him. Beast! But he smelt nice. Yes, he did. Of peat and soap and tobacco and whisky and tweed—always so—of tweed, even when in evening dress. Odd!
She met him in her uncle’s house. Poor calf! How she despised him—sick fool! She had to pass him. Hateful! She trembled. Her knees shook. She hated him so. Then—that smell! Peat, soap, tobacco, whisky and—tweed. He in evening dress.
She caught her breath. He caught her in his arms. Her face upturned—the thing’s too poignant for the words one has! Really. But one does one’s best. Start over, then——
She was caught in his arms, terribly enfolding her—around and around and around he wrapped those long, long strong arms—Phew! One gets so excited writing it.
She was incredibly swooning through incredible spaces, in incredible seas, through incredible blackness, in incredible tweedy smells——
Then they went in to dinner.
CHAPTER VIII
She loved him so! Perfect he was. Simply perfect. Perfectly simple. In every way. A paragon.
He never even swore. Hanging a picture, he caught his thumb a proper crack with a hammer, that is to say, he hit it. “Mice and mumps!” cried Harry. She loved him so.
Oh, rare saying! It epitomized Harry to her—his only swear word. So perfect he was! “Mice and mumps!” Never anything stronger. Never “Rats and rickets!” Never “Snakes and scarlet-fever.” Never “Terrapins and tuberculosis!” No. Only “Mice and mumps.” She loved him so! Oh, rapturous affinity!
So they were married. There were children. She, not cognizant of nature’s dower to her sex, was surprised. No one had ever told her. Simcox had never mentioned it. Sturgiss said nothing about it. How was she to know? One cannot know everything, and she was so busy at the office.
Three children, happy Huggo, happy Doda, happy Benji—happy Rosalie—everybody happy, except Harry. He gloomed sometimes,glowered sometimes. Brooded now. Spoke——
“Did you ever notice anything queer about the children?”
Ha! What now? Sets the wind in that quarter? Her defenses bristle.
“What do you mean?”
“Have you ever thought that they are notquitelike other children?”
Oh, this was dangerous! Where would this lead? Oh, dangerous.
“Particularize, Harry, particularize!”
“Have you ever noticed that Huggo is crosseyed? Or that Doda has two left feet? and I think—Ithinkthat Benji’s face is on upside down.”
Stand by! Stand by! She has the drift of this.
“Oh, let that go. I have a reply to that!” A mirage on her face.
“What reply?”
“I am a woman!”
Unanswerable. He put his arm around her. “It’s over. It’s over. Let’s forget it, Rosalie.”
“I don’t believe the whale swallowed Jonah!” Huggo speaking.
She sat upright. She stared. She called out dreadfully. Her face was all miraged up.
“Huggo!”
“Well, mother, you never taught me to believe it.”
She drew her hand to her heart. She was deathly sick. It was very embarrassing. Huggo! The whale! Jonah!
She worked with her fingers at the key ring, removing her office key.
“I’m coming home, Harry.”
“Coming home?”—puzzled Harry.
“Coming home!”
“Why, my dear, my dear, steady on! You’re home already. Mice and mumps! Why, you came home two hours ago! Why, you—” bewildered Harry.
They carried her up to bed, feet first. She had an almost fatal mirage.
So she gave up her job. Spent all her time with her children. Read them the dear old things, the kind that mother used to teach, “Line upon Line,” “Step by Step,” “Mother Goose,” the Rollo books.
“Mice and mumps!” cried Harry, adding “Mice and mumps!” He was so happy. But the children? “Dull,” they cried, “deadly dull.Old stuff! Mid-Victorian!Ab-so-lootly ob-so-lete!Cut it out, mother dear! Dispense with it!”
She gave it up. Went back to the office.
“After all, Iama woman.” She spoke a mouthful.
A quick finish now. The Toboggan for everybody. They’re off!
Harry came in. His face iron hard.
“What is it, Harry?”
“It’s Huggo.”
“Huggo?”
“Huggo!”
“Hug-go?”
“Huggo!!”
“Not Huggo?”
“Yes, Huggo!!!”
“Well, what?”
“In jail for highway robbery.”
She went to the bell. “Will you have your tea now?”
“Tea! Mice and—I mean tea? Why didn’t you teach that boy that the whale swallowed Jonah?” His voice like axes thudding. “That’s the cause of this! How could he know that highway robbery was wrong, if he didn’t know the Jonah swal—the whale swallowed Jonah?Why didn’t you tell him that well-known fact?”
She looked at him, miragically, as usual. “I’ll tell you why.I am a woman!”
Bull’s-eye! The perfect answer! He put his arm around her.
“Come, let’s forget it.”
She saw Huggo in prison. “Why did you do it, Huggo?”
“My name’s Hugh. Everybody at home called me that awful name. I couldn’t stick it. I’d rather be in jail.”
Strike one!
Doda now. Her turn. The less said the better. But one must say something. Say—Doda, then, baby girl, tiny daughter. That’ll do to start it.
Say—look, there she is! She’s fourteen. Look, there she is! She’s sixteen. Look, there she is! She’s eighteen. That’ll help out a bit.
Say—Dances. Untidiness. Powder on her nose. No Jonah in her head. That’ll do to fill in.
Say—look, there she is! She’s dead. That’ll finish her.
The less said, the better.
Strike two!
CHAPTER XIV
And Benji. Look, thereheis. Benji! Look, there’s the Benji one! Not much to look at, Benji. Mostly spectacles, the darling. Her Benji! He’s at school, is Benji. He’s at his books. He gets prizes. Harry idolizes him, weeps over him. Rosalie, too, though a woman. Her wee one. One should have mentioned that his name was Benji.
Little Benji collides with a train. It isn’t a fair match. Benji was outclassed. The train and Benji weren’t in the same class at all. A bicycle would have sufficed.
But, the result is the same—Benji dies. She had never taughthimabout Jonah and not to collide with trains.
Therefore, he’s dead.
Strike three! Striker out!
That’s all there is. There isn’t any more. Supply of children exhausted. Yet there was to have been more—much more and worse. Harry dynamiting the Albert Memorial as a protest against matrimony. Rosalie—what? Who can say?
But one cannot any more go on. Tears run down one’s nose and dilute one’s ink. One’s heart——
Look forward then....
They’re all right now. Huggo in Canada, reformed. So he’s all right now. Rosalie at home, every day, all day, teaches Huggo’s daughter about Jonah. So she’s all right now. Harry say “Mice and mumps” over and over again all day long. So he’s all right now. Doda and Benji still dead. Sothey’reall right now.