The Man Who Loved Children (30 page)

“Here you come as usual in the nick of time, young Archie,” said she. “A young puss I have here has been giving lip again. I want you to speak to her. She must be sick of listening to women’s jaw.”

“Certainly, Mother,” he said, taking it to heart, and fixing his little round glasses at the girl who was retreating through the back hall.

“Nellie! Come here at once.”

The women looked very serious. He planted himself a little to the side of the three women, all taller than he. “What is it?” he muttered to Hassie. Hassie told him the offense.

“What did you say, Nellie?” he asked. “Repeat the word. You told Louie something.” When he said “Louie,” he winced slightly, for he detested the child as well as her father. It pained him to have to be compared with this other hand-picked son-in-law. The harum-scarum little creature looked worried; but she was frightened and told all. Archie said,

“You will go up to your room and pack, Nellie.”

Immediately there was a movement amongst the women, Henny saying, “Quite right; I’d do the same,” but Hassie looking doubtful and Old Ellen taking the apron from Nellie’s hands,

“Well, if she’s going, I have to get the supper.”

“She can have her notice, but she must wait till tomorrow,” said Hassie, “Mother can’t be left alone and Barry is out.”

Louie started forward to help, “No, Uncle Barry is in the stables.”

“How do you know?” cried Henny.

“I saw him; he’s asleep on the bed up there.” There was another cat’s-paw of emotion, Henny declaring, “You had no right to go sneaking up there, haven’t I told you not to,” and, Hassie fervently ejaculating that Henny should look after a young girl better, both tweaked hold of poor Louie’s dress and urged her out on to the veranda, “Now go and play and don’t cause any more trouble.” Too much was going on, however, for them to notice her, and Evie, who remained sitting all the time on the bottom shelf of the big hall stand, saw everything unrebuked.

In the end Nellie went up to pack, Hassie driving her before her like a heifer to market, through the kitchens and to the enclosed stairs. Old Ellen going up the front stairs, arrived heavily and flatfooted in her room at the same time, going through the billiard room to say,

“Stop blubbering, my girl, and get your things together unless you want us to pack for you, and it mighn’t be a bad idea. I’m sorry to see you go: you were a good girl in your way.”

Meanwhile, in the breakfast room, where Archie sat with Henny and Hassie had returned, a violent conversation had arisen about Nellie’s bags. All servant girls stole, said Archie; and Hassie said that where they didn’t it was the exception that proved the rule.

“I’d steal if I had only her threadbare rags, and rich rotters swanked their things under my nose,” said Henny viciously, irritated by Archie’s pious look and cautionary notions. Archie did not deign to answer this; but he gave Henny a secret glance which seemed to mean that he wouldn’t put it past her; and she replied with a black look.

“But I feel embarrassed,” confessed Hassie, “when I look through and find nothing. It is like a slap in the face.”

“You must not think of yourself,” Archie assured her severely, “it has a demoralizing effect on the girls if they think they can get away with anything. If they don’t steal this time, then they will next, provided they fancy they will not be searched.”

The upshot of it was that Archie’s male authority won. No sooner had Nellie brought down her old-fashioned trunk and valise than they had to be set down in the great hall and opened again. Henny poh-pohed and declared she would not stay there poking her nose into any slovenly, filthy Highlandtown rags, and went out of the hall, while Archie held up his small white hand, trying to frown down Henny of whom he now violently disapproved, and sternly told the girl not to touch the things but to let her mistress go through them.

“Then she must get the potstick or the copper stick,” said Henny, from the door. “If she touches the mess, she’s a fool; I’d rather be boiled in oil than put a finger to it; who knows what dirt is there—bugs or some disease, who knows what dirt? Here,” said she, and stuck out between Hassie and Old Ellen towards Archie a pair of brass-handled tongs that she had seized from the fireplace in the breakfast room, “here, Archie, lift her things out with these!” But it was an insult to Archie, not the girl. He turned away and said,

“Mother, will you look through, please.”

Henny shrugged and gave the tongs to Evie to put back. “Of all the dam foolery,” said Henny.

Meanwhile Old Ellen was puffing over the trunk and pushing her fingers under old stockings and the remains of a dark apricot outfit bought for Nellie’s last Easter, and presently hauled out a photograph of Barry, from Barry’s room.

“What is this, my lady?” she asked, as she held out her hands.

“You are a thief,” said Hassie, horrified.

“You know what we could do to you for this?” inquired Archie, solemnly.

She looked around at them, frowning. It ended by her having to unpack everything before their eyes and then repacking and trudging out with both packets to Hassie’s car where she had to sit. Hassie would take her downtown when she went. Meanwhile, Henny was very angry with them all, because this meant that Louie or she would have to stay overnight and get their own food, and that Hassie would have to engage a new servant by tomorrow; and Henny was more angry still because now it could not be put off any longer and they would have to sit down at once and discuss Henny’s financial position. The family was to make Henny a loan, in order to pay off bills she had run up for the children’s clothes and dentistry, unknown to Sam, and she was to pay Archie back each time she received money from Sam. At her own urgent, exasperated request, after many threats of suicide and tears, Archie had agreed not to tell Sam about these debts.

“He would make it an excuse for taking my children away from me,” said Henny, and related how Samuel struck her when he found out about the $102 owing at Middenway’s, the corner grocer’s. There was some talk about speaking to Samuel about striking his wife, but secretly they all felt that it would not do their spoiled sister any harm. Old David had paid Henny’s bills so long after they each had had to struggle for every cent they used.

The clear autumn weather was with them, fresh as spring; and for the children it was always spring anyway: shriveling summer was spring, the blight of the leaves was spring, the frozen gutter was spring, and spring waiting for the buds to glisten and the birds to break eggshells was early spring too, spring so young and foolish that no poems yet applied to it, spring just born, spring with throbbing head, spring babbling and spilling, spring with jelly backbone.

Louie, going to the eastern veranda, to hang out the dishcloths and dish mop after washing up, saw the strange girl, Olive Burchardt, going down beside the fence, between the thinning lower branches of the trees.

Olive, who was fourteen already, looked at her and smirked, “You wash the dishes.”

Louie grinned and blushed, but the rictus of embarrassment pleased Olive.

“You wash up; I seen you hanging out the dishcloth,” Olive elaborated.

“Yes, I know.”

“You do the work,” Olive continued, sidling along up the street, towards the back steps, her dark, famished face never to be fed, looking backwards over the paling tops. Louie watched her intently. Olive laughed.

“Mr. Middenway said you passed lowest in all the school.”

“How does he know?”

“He went down to ask why his kids didn’t pass and he found out everything.”

Olive sidled down the street again and, without another word, but with a few backward grins and grimaces, made towards the Middenway store. Louie stared after her as painfully as if Olive was dragging some piece of her living flesh and blood over the fence tops with her. She knew Olive was going to chat about her and her mother with the Middenways and that everyone knew they owed a huge bill to the Middenways: she knew that to owe a huge bill was both a distinction and a disgrace. Then there was the hushed-up theft mystery. Olive bought from cheap Murchison, the butcher. Although the Burchardts lived just down the block, Mrs. Pollit knew nothing of them.

Hazel Moore, the maid from Monocacy, looked between the curtains of Henny’s room and called, “Your mother wants you.”

“Yes, Hazel.”

She went reluctantly indoors, giving a last stretch after Olive, now out of sight. Henny was continuing to Hazel,

“Lord, I hate to go and get the kids shoes: I can’t keep them in shoes the way they scuff and kick and shuffle along. In summer they play football and skate, and in winter they tramp in the wet till the leather is sodden and rotten.”

Louie called from the staircase, “What dress will I put on, Mother?”

“Don’t ask silly questions. I hate her to go into Washington, in that old thing: she looks like a sack of potatoes. Tell Toddy [Ernest] to clean my shoes. A-ah, deuce take it. I burned my neck again; where’s the cold cream? Don’t I look foul? I look like a half-breed.”

Hazel, the tall-boned, blue-tinged Catholic maid, called from the bedroom,

“Toddy, Toddy: clean Mother’s shoes.”

Evie called, “Ernest is feeding the animals.”

Hazel went to the south hall door calling, “Toddy, Toddy.”

“Yippills?” Ernest answered.

“Clean Mother’s shoes, darling.”

“Momento, zecond; Little-Sam has the snake out.”

“What do you say? What is that you said?” Yes, this was followed by a shriek of horror, “Henny, that boy has the snake out of the cage.”

“Momento,” shouted Ernest soothingly. “Smart’s the word and cool’s the action: snako, go back.”

Little-Sam said nothing during this excitement, but picked up the cold, sulky snake by the head behind the ears, and as it began to wreathe itself slowly round his arm, he offered it the cage door. The snake put out its forked tongue tentatively, hesitated, and began to penetrate the cage, moving slowly over the dried grass. Meanwhile Henny had burned herself again, under the ear, an ugly burn that she could not afford, for her hair scarcely fell there. But the slot door fell to, and the snake was home again, sitting in the eleven o’clock sun, grudgingly awake on this cold day.

“Hurry up,” shouted Henny.

“Ya’m: come nup,” Ernest answered, bolting into view over the steep lawn, now rough with grass and weeds of all summer. He appeared breathless, under the back veranda, cheerfully anxious and conciliatory.

“Naughty boy,” cried Hazel, “to let the snake out.”

“I was cleaning the box,” said Ernest. “Dad-pad told me to clean it. Gee, I didn’t know Mothering was going already. O.K.”

Louie loomed on the second floor south and leaned over, “Ernie, hay! Toddy, Ernesto!”

Ernest craned upwards, “Whappills?”

“How’s the possum?”

“Mean, she hissed at me.”

“Are any of the snakes asleep yet?”

“Sure, one and there’s another shutting her eyes. Gee, they are torpid, gee are they sleepy!” He jubilated. He ran back into the kitchen to finish the half-blacked shoes. Louie went slowly into her father’s room, which she now occupied alone, and finished dressing at a snail’s pace, pondering over the possum’s meanness and the snake’s hibernation. On her father’s open roll-top desk was a book on parthenogenesis, a fertile and beautiful book of metaphysics, as it seemed to Louie, a lens on Life and its transparent secrets. Spreading glass but subtle wings, wide as the world, Louie, meandering through flowery mazes of metaphysics, was walking out with beauty and destiny. This made the process of dressing very slow, and Henny was powdered, curled, pressed, and had her hat on before Louie had buttoned her dress down the back.

“Louie, Louie!”

She fastened on her sailor and went downstairs. Her shoes were old and down at heel, but it was a happy day today, for they were going to get new ones. Henny and Hazel stood in the hall with a tinge of acrimony in their remarks to each other; something had been blowing up for days past. Hazel, twelve years older than Henny, strict, sober, and religious, made no bones about lecturing her on her wasteful ways; and Mr. Middenway, the grocer, had made some tart remarks around the district about the Pollit bills, which Hazel had picked up coming out of Mass the Sunday before. Another Sunday loomed, and Hazel wished to pay the bill in time.

“I have you and the children to look after,” said Hazel, standing very stiff.

“Go to Tokyo!” Henny answered, continuing to Louie humorously, “Can’t you shift your great haunches faster than that? The great fat lump drives me crazy. I suppose you were mooning over some book?”

Coming downstairs, Louie was wondering whether Olive Burchardt was still running round the streets doing the errands, for if so, she might see her. She began to run downstairs headlong and tumbled over the last three steps, falling straight on her nose and finishing in a heap at the bottom. She picked herself up, crying. Henny said,

“Oh, she’s black and blue: I’m ashamed to be seen out with her—they’ll think I beat her: everyone knows I’m the kid’s stepmother”; and to Hazel, tossing her head, “I’ll give the order to Mr. Hankin myself, and pay him; and I’ll pay Middenway on the way back. Please stop bothering about it.”

“I should if I were you,” Hazel remarked stiffly.

Although the day was mild, Henny was wearing the heavy fur coat lent to her by Hassie, and fur-rimmed boots.

“That’s so pretty, Mother,” Louie said.

“Help your mother and see she doesn’t slip on the snow,” Hazel warned her.

Ernie whooped and dashed out to help Henny down the steps, which he had just swept, and to the gate. The flurry of children’s good-bys set in again, and left them in a drift across the path and veranda.

“Good-by, Motherbunch,” shouted Ernest, at her ear. The twins were struggling together in an upstairs window, squeaking urgently, “Mothering, Mothering!”

“What is it?” She turned back. Louie was hopping from one foot to another, craning her neck to see if Olive was anywhere in the neighborhood.

“Good-by, Mothering,” the twins cried.

“Good-by,” said Evie, on the verge of tears.