The Man Who Loved Children (11 page)

Louie, who was standing at the top of the stairs ready to answer her whistle, started to come down, stumbled on the oilcloth, and sat down three steps below. She had hurt herself, but at the present time she was practicing to be a Spartan and so said nothing.

“Johnny-head-in-air!” said Ernie.

Louie came downstairs with dignity. The twins, who had answered their whistles from the animal cages, burst into the hall, and jostled each other at the bottom of the stairs,

“Looloo, Looloo! Dad’s going to Manila [
Malaya, you dope! Manila and Malaya!
] Louie, Dad’s going with the Expedition!”

“Of course, with the Expeditionary Force,” confirmed Ernest.

“I know!” said Louie, loudly. “I knew before you.”

“Tell Thomas-Woodrow to tell his mother,” Sam begged Ernest, in a low voice. Since Sam and his wife were not on speaking terms, even this remarkable announcement had to be made by a go-between. Ernest had dealt with many difficult situations. He now took his stand in the northern, or front, door of the hall, nearest his mother’s bedroom, and shouted officially.

“Tomkins, Daddy is going to the Pacific and Malaya with the Smithsonian Expedition.”

Henny, of course, understood that this was for her. They heard her say to Evie, who arrived rather anxiously at her bedside, “Tell him to go to the big bonfire for all I care.”

But Sam, ever true to his intention, had cornered Tommy, so that Henny’s baby boy now appeared shyly beside her also, and repeated the news.

“All right, my son,” she answered dryly.

But she was nervous. She sent Evie flying to the kitchen for fresh tea and toast. Today there was a big, unexpected painting job. She hated the noise of the blowtorch, and the smell of the paint, old or new, made her sick. Usually during painting jobs she managed to pay a visit to her sister Hassie in Baltimore, or to go down to the dressmaker’s and discuss the little girls’ clothes, or merely to gossip. But this had been sprung on her; and then, if Sam was really going away at last, she would have to get word to him, go over money matters, and discuss the care of the children. He was a fanatic about the children’s education, having ideas all his own, and everything had to be done according to his notions, to the very last detail. Her children could be vaccinated, if she chose, but Louie must not be vaccinated; he would not obey rules about dental and medical inspection, and yet he made a spectacle of himself both at the school and at the Department, if the children could not go everywhere free, because they were not earning; and all the rest of it. She wished he would not always try to show himself superior to everyone.

Then, there was the care of the large, old-fashioned house, the neglected grounds; and not only Sam’s small zoo, but his other possessions and constructions, a pond, a rockery, aquaria, his museum, and so on. What a world of things he had to have to keep himself amused! And as to clothing, food, provender, and household necessaries—they were as usual down to their last stitch, ounce, grain, and bar of soap. Sam would take a blue fit when he saw the length of the bills, and at that they were bills doctored by Henny or by a conniving petty tradesman for the sake of her father’s estate. He would take a blue fit, probably try to divorce her, or separate, she thought, if he ever got to know the truth.

She bit her lip, got up, put on her red dressing gown and the drugstore slippers given to her by Tommy on her last birthday, and looked impatiently for her fountain pen. It was a beautiful and expensive one given to her by her father, but it was always hidden somewhere.

“I believe he takes it and hides it himself!” she declared irrationally. At last, she called Evie from the table and sent her to fetch school pen and ink; and she sat down to write a note to her husband on a sheet of white paper embossed with her initials HCP—Henrietta Collyer Pollit. The few lines finished, she called Louie, who was carrying in the oatmeal, and said to her,

“Put that on your father’s desk where he can see it.”

“Pog!” Sam shouted his cant word for food. Bonnie began to bring in the remaining plates of porridge.

“Tomkins was changing the stones on the path so they could see a new view,” burst out Saul; and all the children shrieked with laughter while Tommy got very red.

Sam was served first, then a plate put in Louie’s empty place, then in Ernest’s, and so on in order of age. The ritual was that Saul and Little-Sam were to have their plates placed on the table at the same instant.

“Orb-epp,” Sam said in a tone of reproof to Louie. This was one of his words for “serviette.” She brought it to him. As soon as the plates were empty, all but Little-Sam’s, Ernest nudged his father, who said,

“Go ahead, Looloo!”

Louisa then stood up in her place and repeated, stonily,

“The world stands aside to let the man pass who knows whither he is going.—David Starr Jordan.”

“It’s a little one,” observed Ernest. Sam nodded quietly at Louisa, which meant she was to go on. She continued,

“Perhaps there is no more important component of character than steadfast resolution. The boy who is going to make a great man or is going to count in any way in after life—”

“Or the woman,” Sam commented.

“That is not in it,” she countered, and finished,

“—must make up his mind not merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses or defeats.—Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life.”

Little-Sam was still struggling stolidly through his porridge which he found revolting. He flushed, now that the recitation was at an end. He was in line of Sam’s eye (as who was not?). Sam did not fail him,

“Eat up, Little Samphire!”

The six-year-old plucked up courage to ask if he could leave the rest. He had the nerve for this at least once a week, always with the same result. Sam said solemnly,

“Waste not; want not.”

Little-Sam gloomily fell to, picking up a lump of cold glue on the tip of his spoon. Sam, to cover his condition, continued cheerfully.

“Teddy was a great and good man, a good citizen, good President, naturalist, and father. He had some little wrong ideas, but he was a great American. And I can’t say no handsomer than that, me lads!”

Ernest, with a malicious expression, but a modest tone, inquired, “How many sayings has Looloo learned this year?”

Sam fell in with his mood at once, “Oodles: but does she really underconstumble one of them? No: Looloo is obstinate. Loogoo-brious does not appreciate her pore little dad.”

Louisa went scarlet and flashed at him,

“I know more by heart than you.”

Sam, with a glance of complicity round the table, giggled in an underhand style. Ernest promptly answered his own question,

“Looloo learned one hundred and sixty-five, only thirty in January because she didn’t on New Year’s and twenty-nine in February because it’s leap year and this is June fourteenth, that is, sum total of one hundred and sixty-five sayings for 1936.”

Sam smiled dazzlingly at Ernest, who continued with a comical grin, “How many balusters in the balustrade?”

They tried to guess, but of course Ernest knew.

“Feel better; hooray!” exclaimed Sam now. “Afore I had the collywobbles and pains in the lumbar region—by which I don’t refer to Oregon none, lads. Here we are all reunited. You should have seen all Pollitry in the old days united round Grandpa Charlie’s table, improvising their parts, singing the ‘Anvil Chorus.’ Now, I wish you kids would do that: your father’s musical enough! Bonniferous!” he shouted, “come on in out of the kitchen and we’ll have a singsong before the job.”

Bonnie came running in, her eyes shining. She sat down and bubbled over before she had even sat down, “Oh, I had the funniest dream: I dreamed I was a lumberjack, and we were hauling in the savannas: I had seven elephants—or was it nine?” She paused anxiously and looked round the table. “No, nine, because the ninth fell in the mud—a sort of morass—and we were hauling and pulling away for dear life to get it out. Can you imagine anything more ridiculous, me seated on an elephant’s neck? Isn’t it silly, what you dream?”

“I dreamed I was in a forest of snakes,” said Sam: “bad sign! Snakes mean enemies. Whenever I dream snakes, I meet one or more enemies. It’s a sign. Now last night I was walking through a mangrove swamp and from every tree hung snakes, hissing at me and swaying into my path. Got to look out. Woke this morning with a hot head and the collywobbles. But never mind. Here we all are united. Looloo,” he said heartily, “go and tell Pet to come and sit down. I want the family united today. I want you round today, for I am going away,” he sang.

“Across Manila Bay,” chanted Little-Sam, relieved at having swallowed all the oatmeal. They all laughed in triumph at this rhyme.

Louisa could be heard in Henny’s room delivering the message. They heard Henny, sharp as a rifle, “He has enough of an audience; I’ve eaten.”

Louie came back looking foolish. “Henny!” shouted Sam indignantly.

They did not take much notice of this, but Bonnie pleaded, “If she doesn’t feel well, Samuel.”

“Henny!” shouted Sam.

“Tell your father to go and chase himself,” shouted Henny from the kitchen.

“Samphire,” said Sam, containing himself, “go and tell Mother, I order her to come and sit with us at this Sunday breakfast. I will not tolerate this everlasting schism,” he finished with a shout of rage.

“Oh, I’m too tired to fight him,” Henny said in the kitchen. She dawdled in, her color high and her eyes black, and sat down stiff as a poker in her armchair, which was always left vacant for her. She tossed her head in her old-fashioned style, giving him her famous
black look.

“Let us be together, Henny,” said Sam along the table, in a gentle voice. She gave him a glance more furious than before.

“Tell your father,” she said to Evie, seated beside her, “that it’s enough to be ordered like a dog: I don’t want to listen to his mawkery.” Evie turned her head toward her father and silently pleaded with him to consider this message transmitted. Sam had his eyes on his plate, trying to restrain himself, and getting redder every minute.

Ernest said at once, “Daddy, Mother says not to speak to her.”

No one laughed. Bonnie said brightly, “Come on, kids, finish up your toast and your orange juice and scram! Lot to be done!”

The children obediently fell to. After a few minutes Henny got up to get herself some more tea. Sam could not prevent himself from admonishing her gently, “Henrietta, you really oughtn’t to tan the inside of your stomach this way: it must be like leather.”

She tossed her head and disappeared through the door. There was a brief silence of thanksgiving. Then Sam said very gently, “Singsong, boys and girls,” and he gave the first notes, in which they immediately joined,

“Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus!”

At this moment, a quavering little voice called from the street, “Samm-ee!”

The twins and Tommy scrambled from their places and rushed to the back veranda, where they were at once followed by their father.

From where they stood, they peered at Thirty-fourth Street going downhill, barely visible through the screen of trees and bushes. Diagonally across from the bottom fence were the houses of Reservoir Road, where some of their friends and neighbors lived. These were as wonderful a collection of people as were ever got together in one manhive. Sam, that quick and malicious observer, had got them by heart, and all without contact greater than “Good morning!” and “Good evening!” on the way to the Wisconsin Avenue car. “Many a good laugh the caravanserai had over their foibles and follies,” said Bonnie. They were all eccentric, touched, ill-intentioned, ignorant, superstitious, avaricious, or full members of nitwitry. Their children, however, as Sam’s children found, were commonplace and amiable little beings, and Sam himself did all he could to attract the very small boys and the girls of all ages to Tohoga House. Sam did not care for the girls of school age as much as for the baby girls.

He could often be seen spying out of the attic windows, up and down the streets, for some toddler from the neighbors’ houses, who might be making for the Garden of Eden, Tohoga House, or peering up at its clifflike walls and the immense trees, full of birds and birds’ nests, and at the man-high hedges and who might grin in a watery way or even wave its sea-anemone hand when it saw Sam’s sunflower-colored head away up there amongst the birds and leaves. He beamed, he bloated with joy, to see how they feared and loved his great house. He had lately thought of calling it Tohoga Place, instead of Tohoga House. Through the eccentric neighbors (with smaller houses) and their worshiping children Sam loved his house more. For Sam was one of those careful, fearful men who well remember worse days, and are determined never to return to them. Once he had paid rent for the small sunless back room in his brother’s jerry-built sham-Tudor ribbon dwelling in Dundalk, near the shipyards where his brother was then a painter; and even that was a step up from his father’s house. Tohoga House, which this very day he purposed to call Tohoga Place, with a few scrawls of paint, and for which he paid only fifty dollars monthly, with taxes, to his father-in-law, was still all joy to Samuel, so much joy, in fact, that he could forget the black days of his marriage, Henny’s early threats of infanticide, suicide, arson. For Sam was naturally lighthearted, pleasant, all generous effusion and responsive emotion. He was incapable of nursing an injustice which would cost him good living to repay, an evil thought which it would undo him to give back, or even sorrow in his bosom; and tragedy itself could not worm its way by any means into his heart. Such a thing would have made him ill or mad, and he was all for health, sanity, success, and human love.

Little-Sam was carrying on a conversation with the infant, Roger White, about the Pollits’ soapbox truck, which Sam had made and had baptized
Leucosoma.
Sam called to the baby boy in his honeyed, teasing voice,