The Man Who Loved Children (27 page)

They found Old Ellen Collyer in the housekeeper’s room, buttoned to the full, sagging throat, in black, stout and placid, doing coarse crochet. The little girls ran forward and kissed her, “Hello, Old Ellen,” and “Hello, Old Ellen” (for, she said, with all her grandchildren, she would think she was grandma of the whole world, if she let them say,
Grandma
); and Henny, pouting, “Hello, Mother, isn’t it a beastly day?” threw her coat on the sideboard and sank into a chair, after pulling the old-fashioned bellpull.

The little girls at once ran out, while Old Ellen was saying, “Oh, only this same old shell stitch,” and Henny fretted, “I hate it, it looks like an old Irish Biddy’s petticoat,” and asked for tea, and an aspirin, and damned the world and said, Yes, she had letters and money from Sam; when he was away she could stand him, and the farther he was away the more she could stand him! Now, the little girls were allowed to roam freely over the house, into the round room, the nursery, all the shut family bedrooms, no longer used, the billiard room, and even the dark trunk room in which was the foot of the winding stair which led to the roof and the lookout. They went into the kitchens, the closets; Evie ended up in the drawing room full of closed cabinets of china dolls, with china lace petticoats: and Louie ended in the empty stables, still sweet with hay and clean flagstones, where the sun explored the cracks of old greased halters hanging from the beams. Blowsy, tall, dusk cherry in complexion with the long summer’s sun was Louie, fresh from running up and down the rock at Harpers Ferry and getting herself confused with Christian meandering upwards Beulah, she and Dan with Christian and Hopeful freed from Doubting Castle, seeing somewhere in the air (over the greens of West Virginia), the Celestial City, freed by the golden key Promise—but what promise? The promise of reaching the grass uplands of youth and understanding the world. No one asked her any questions about her summer any year, and so this world was her own secret Mesopotamia and angel-guarded pleasure, the valley of rocs and the land shadowing with wings, all strange countries, skies, spheres, and songs rolled into one small rock of the earth, known to others as Bolivar Heights, but to her as Louie’s dreams which have put on flesh. For nine months of the year were trivial miseries, self-doubts, indecisions, and all those disgusts of preadolescence, when the body is dirty, the world a misfit, the moral sense qualmish, and the mind a sump of doubt: but three months of the year she lived in trust, confidence, and love.

With some dim idea of the golden stair, Louie climbed up the dusty wooden staircase between stable and barn to the lofts above the stables. There were two doorways without doors. In the right-hand loft was an army bed, and on this Uncle Barry lay on his back, with his mouth open and a yellow beam on his tired cheek. He was slender, dark, like Henny, thirty-five, one year her junior, and Old Ellen’s last child. Within reach of his dangling hand were two empty whisky bottles, the like of those bottles which Louie at various times and years in her explorations of Monocacy had discovered in Barry’s room, the billiard room, the round room, on the lookout, in the dung heap, in the tree guards of the cow paddock, and in the groom’s toilet, which was situated behind the potting shed. The gardener and groom had gone: and here in the sweet-smelling dusty loft Barry had established his new playground, an inebriate’s holy of holies, where he lay in pleasure, king of solitude. Louie pored over the snoring man. He was tall and had been handsome, but was putting on a little paunch. Louie liked Barry. He was usually out, as they said: even Louie sensed somehow that he had
a woman
in Baltimore,
like the old man, a chip off the old block.
Who had heard it said? But the children knew it, without wonder. He liked the drink. He had large, absorbed eyes, he lurched slightly, he would smile in his dark mustache, with meaningless satire, and would murmur and mutter, in his sweet Baltimore inaudibility, something or other to Louie. He did not detest her; he even took an interest in her, faintly, as if from a great distance; and occasionally would show her things. Once, in some webby past, he had studied the dyeing of textiles with the idea of going into a hat factory downtown; and then he had collaborated with a Johns Hopkins man in a little idea—the printing of obscene books after hours, on a little press, and they made a bit of money, and then he had given up the effort altogether and devoted himself to drink, which was now his only occupation. He had charm, he could not be affronted: Louie liked him. After watching him for a while, Louie got bored, because nothing happened, he did not shriek, or see snakes, or get up. She wandered back over the saddling paddock, through the now-empty kitchens, to the housekeeper’s room.

“—and said she was going to take permanganate,” said Old Ellen, “because Barry wouldn’t marry her to get her out of trouble. I had enough trouble with them.”

“Remember that poor unfortunate—what was her name, you know, the Sleighs’—Delia!—they found her on the floor in a terrible state and she had taken Lysol?”

“They found that woman last year under a bush, you remember, who had taken about two hundred aspirins—Heavenly Father!”

Henny said impatiently, “There are so many ways to kill yourself, they’re just old-fashioned with their permanganate: do you think I’d take permanganate? I wouldn’t want to burn my insides out and live to tell the tale as well; idiots! It’s simple. I’d drown myself. Why not put your head in a gas oven? They say it doesn’t smell so bad. I don’t know. I thought of asking my dentist, Give me some of that stuff, you know, nitrate, no, nitrous oxide, too much and you go out sweetly, or too much ether, eh? Permanganate, or carbolic acid, or arsenic, who would take it? There are so many things. Why, Sam has cyanide in the house any time: that’s what they kill vermin with, you blow it in the holes. Why? Barry could get me some: anyone can get the easy things. Catch me eating two hundred aspirins—my heart would kill me; I couldn’t stand that. I don’t think much of drowning. I’ve thought of opening a vein in a warm bath, I heard of a woman who did that, but I think I’d feel too weak. Why be in misery at the last? There must be plenty of things. I’ve thought of getting too friendly with a doctor, you know, and getting him to give me something. Get in with him, and let him get too friendly with you, then he gets sick of you, you begin to bother him, tell him you’re pregnant or something, or ask him for drugs, and he’ll give you something quick enough. Or you go to his consulting rooms, and he trusts you and leaves you alone—or he leaves the stuff unlocked purposely—foo, I’ve thought of a hundred ways. It’s only a stupid servant girl would do that carbolic-acid trick. And rat poison is too nasty and they can always trace it. I couldn’t touch a revolver—your hand would shake! I’m sure I’d be a poor shot, and then you wouldn’t know where to do it. Oh, in labor pains, it’s different: you want to die, but you want to see the kid too. I don’t have such a bad time, and just about the time I start to tell them to take me and drown me and it too, it comes, and then you begin to wonder about it. And apart from that, I can’t get sick enough. Anyone would think a thin stick like me, weak and miserable, would go down with everything: do you think I get more than my old cough every winter? I bet I live till ninety, with all my aches and pains. To think that’s fifty more years of the Great I-Am. No wonder I want to make away with myself. Who wouldn’t? You grumble, but at least Dad left you alone, he didn’t try to talk you to death.”

“Eleanor had none, Hassie had only one miserable shrimp, and you had all those,” said the old woman, “and look at you—you were never any different! Just a cornstalk. You were a nice-looking girl, though! I thought you’d marry that Albert!”

“Oh, shut up!”

“Look at Wally,” said the old woman, laughing: “what’s the matter with you? Why don’t you get another? You’re slow, that’s all. You can pick up a king yet at your age.”

“I have a fine king, a god. One king is enough. Next time I pick an I.W.W.; better than the Professor at any rate. I’d rather wash for a drunk than let a high-and-mighty work for me. At least I’d have a lively time. Yes, you know I was sure of it. I’m gone. Think of it. Isn’t it a disgrace? What am I to do with another one and I owe what I owe already? I’ve been feeling wretched and I got sick on the taxi over. God, what we women have to put up with; and I’m not even allowed to complain.”

“You know the story of the doctor who found the man walking up and down in the lobby of the hospital and said, ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘My wife’s having a baby upstairs,’ said the man. ‘Well, why don’t you go upstairs?’ asked the doctor. ‘No,’ the man said, ‘we’re not speaking, I don’t want to show interest, we haven’t spoken for two years.’ ‘But, well,’ the doctor said, ‘explain to me, will you?’ ‘Oh,’ said the husband, ‘I’m not as mad at her as that.’ Reminds me of the woman with six children who told the census taker she was an old maid but not the fussy sort. Did you hear about the woman who kept going to Dr. Uno for operations and he asked her, ‘Who’s the father?’ and she kept on saying, ‘Mr. Whosthis,’ until the doctor said, ‘Why don’t you marry the man?’ and she said, ‘I don’t like him, doctor.’ That’s like you, Henny, that’s just like you!” She slapped her crochet down on her knee, laughing, “Oh, you’re a case, you take the cake. What for? You can’t blame the man for—”

“All men are dogs,” said Henny.

“Stop eating bread and sauce now, if you love me,” said Old Ellen, “is that the proper thing to eat? No wonder you feel bad. You always did it when you were growing up too, and that’s what made you such a namby-pamby girl. If you’d had a bit of flesh on you you could have got that”

“Oh, do stop harping on Albert every time I come,” Henny said impatiently. “When’s Archie coming? I think I’ll go and lie down. Where’s Hassie? I hope she’ll drive me back, I can’t afford taxi fares, and I can’t afford a new tire, so here I am.”

“Will you stop flouncing round?” asked Old Ellen.

“I’m getting sick of this pattern,” grumbled Henny. “But everyone admires it. I made three bonnets last month.”

“You were always soaping and sighing,” said Old Ellen, “and making cow eyes at the boys, you had no reserve. Remember the time Dunne Legge kissed you and you told me you were going to get married. Oh, ha-ha!”

“If you think that was a joke,” said Henny; “I was wild about Dunne—all the crushes I had.”

“Well—well—well, it’s all over now.”

“That time Dunne was in the hospital and I sent him a pair of bed socks and he said he wanted girls to have fun with, he wasn’t after a sick nurse! The sneak! That’s the second stitch I’ve dropped; I’m all to pieces. Father was in a hurry. A fisheries inspector!”

At this moment there was a rush in the hall, Evie tearing in to announce Aunt Hassie’s arrival in the car. Henny and her mother went out to see Harriet, and Hassie came in saying cheerfully, “Guess who I ran into? Of all people—Dunne! You know what he told me? Poor Connie died at last. It’s a good thing. I heard she kept asking the doctor to put her out.”

“What was it, I didn’t hear that?” Old Ellen asked.

“Cancer, intestinal cancer—”

“Oh, why didn’t he give her an overdose and put her out of her misery? You’d do it for an animal, but we have to suffer!” Henny shivered. “It makes me sick. I’d do it for one of mine, I don’t mind telling you. Poor girl!”

“She wasn’t a girl any more—she was a great big bouncing woman, like me, with shoulders broader than me,” said Hassie: “and she wasted away, she looked like a ghost. I couldn’t have borne to have seen it. I’ve had bad luck myself! That boy of mine in the shop ran a bone into his finger and got blood poisoning, and just five weeks after Pete got his finger into the sausage machine.”

“Nothing but trouble,” declared Old Ellen; “there have been a lot of accidents round here lately, isn’t it funny? It goes in seasons.”

“Connie was thirty-six, I think,” said Henny slowly, “and she was a beauty when she was a girl: she never got married—I can’t understand why. She was stuck on that Senator fellow. Well, if she’d married she’d be leaving some man and children miserable at this minute. Did she linger long? How long was it? I hope not.” After a silence she added, “I didn’t want to earn $100 that way—I owed her that and she went to her grave thinking I was a cheat, I don’t doubt.”

“She was such a big jolly girl,” said Hassie: “she was on the hockey team. Then she went to Washington to get a job, and there was that man in the Post Office, and then this friend of her father’s, the Senator, a married man even then, but—there was something—I never heard—”

“It was her lookout,” said Henny angrily, “a woman who tries to take a man away has it coming to her: but I didn’t think Connie was that sort, to take another woman’s man—you can never tell, when they get the itch, but mind, I liked her: she was a decent sort; and perhaps he went after her—”

The talk fell into murmurs, although the women had no idea that anyone was listening, but soon rose again with Henny retailing her part of it, “She got into trouble, money troubles, I heard every word about it, from—a man I know, I saw her going into a moneylender’s, to tell the honest truth though I never let her see, and he wouldn’t leave her at home, she had to travel round with him as Mrs. if you like! Then the wife got to hear of it and tore down the house; and she went round with him. Then they used to throw them out of hotels in the country, for brawling at night. I saw her once in Washington in my younger days, at a
conversazione
: she had a breath like a salt mine and a great belly like a foaling mare, floating and bloating and talking about her medicine and when she went to the toilet. Then she died, and what does he do? Turns round and writes a book of poetry about his angel and I don’t know what not, the greasy hypocrite, crying and tearing his hair and pretending: and of course he couldn’t marry Connie then. Some other excuse. It was her own fault, but in a way I pitied her. And see now! Isn’t it rotten luck? Isn’t every rotten thing in life rotten luck? When I see what happens to girls I’d like to throttle my two, or send them out on the streets and get it over with.”