The Man Who Loved Children (31 page)

“Oh, good-by, for the love of Mike,” but she waved and smiled at them. Evie rushed down the path unexpectedly, sweeping Tommy and Ernie out of her way in her passion, and her breaking voice was lifted,

“You didn’t kiss me!” Henny blew her a kiss, saying between her teeth, immediately,

“The whole caboosh busting into tears because I don’t go round mugging them. I’ll go to Hankin’s first and pay him and he can send the order. You can get the sugar, six pounds of granulated, on the way back, and tell him I’ll be over to pay him this afternoon without fail.”

Louie’s heart gave a painful throb. Olive Burchardt had just dawdled round the corner of R Street, from the Avenue. She saw Louie and her mother at once and made the same smirk and gesture as before; she meant to say,

You do work, you wash up.

“Can I talk to Olive, Mother, while you go to the butcher’s?”

“What on earth for?”

“I want to ask her, tell her—something.”

When Henny said yes, she ran across the street and yet she knew it was all aimless; she did not really like Olive. Olive waited for her. Louie was much taller this year, tall for twelve, but Olive was weedy, and what Henny called a skinny gutter rat.

“What did you come over for?” asked Olive. “Your mother’s gone into the butcher’s.”

“I know.”

“I just seen Middenway: I was talkin’ to him. He said you passed lowest in the school.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“How does he know?”

“He went and asked at the school about Dorothy, his silly kid. And they told him you were the worst.”

“They wouldn’t tell him about me.”

“They would.”

There was a pause, during Which Louie with flustered face picked at the curb with her shabby shoes.

“Haven’t you got any other shoes?” inquired Olive.

“I’m going to get some today,” she waved vaguely in the direction of the butcher’s.

“You’re a liar,” said Olive enviously, anxious to be contradicted, greedily contemplating Louie’s face; but Louie was absorbed. After a pause, Louie said, “Perhaps I can walk home from school with you on Monday; I’m in the same school with you.”

Olive waited a moment and then said evilly, “I’m not goin’ to school on Monday and no day. I’m leavin’.”

Something seemed to hit Louie. A new sort of pain, sharp and quick as lightning, tore out of its swaddling clothes of flesh, inside Louie. For a moment, she was conscious only of her wrung bowels and the cause of misery beside her, the dark spindly creature. I can’t bear this, something said very audibly inside her. It was like the first stab of an abscess; the sufferer knew it would come back. I can’t bear it. She looked at Olive, “Oh, Olive, don’t go”

Olive could not have known anything about this little girl. Louie had never walked home from school with her, had never been allowed to play with her, and, being clumsy where Olive was spry, had never got into Olive’s athletic, knowing circle in the playground. Louie knew nothing about Olive, had only seen her from a distance, and once, a few mornings ago, in the light falling from a classroom window, a queer light making her complexion greenish. But Olive had the instinctive strike of the cat,

“I’m going away, you’ll never see me again.”

“Oh! Where? Don’t go.”

“I’m goin to work: I’m sick of school.”

“Oh, where, Olive?”

“You couldn’t go there. In Baltimore.”

“I could go to Baltimore.”

“What for?” drawled the wretch, eying her oddly.

“I don’t know.”

They began to cross the street, towards the butcher’s, Olive enlarging on her new life and Louie drearily trying to take an interest in it. Outside the butcher’s they paused,

“Well, so long, got to shove off,” said Olive, but not going.

“So long.”

Louie took one step towards the door and stopped, “Perhaps you could leave on Tuesday?”

“I’m going on Monday to get my books; otherwise I wouldn’t go. You’ll be in school,” said Olive.

“All right.”

“So long.”

Olive dawdled off, while Louie, standing in the butcher’s door, gaped after her miserably. It was a relief that Olive had moved away: but ideas began to pour frantically through Louie’s brain; perhaps something would happen and Olive wouldn’t go, her parents would not move till the end of the week, or at least Tuesday, or they would decide to make her go back to school, or Olive would call by to say good-by, or even give Louie one of her books. But a minute later, Louie, looking down the street at Olive’s pleated blue back and ankle socks, knew that that was the last she would see of her.

“Come inside and help me, Louie,” called Henny in a sweet voice. She was on excellent terms again with the butcher, who, even when the debt fell deepest, still respected her father’s business reputation. Henny was not rude, sharp, and overbearing with storekeepers or their assistants, although most women of her sort think they are obliged to be so; but never failed to “butter them up,” as she put it, and was always recounting the compliments paid to her by them.

Two women standing inside, with red specks of sawdust on their suede shoes, and wearing respectable felt hats, one mustard and one red, were beaming like two bowls of peaches and cream at Henny, and then turned faces like two bowls of prunes and prisms at Louie. One said the expected thing,

“I’m sure she is a great help to you, Mrs. Pollit,” while the other nodded sagely at Louie, “I’m sure you love children, dear: you must be a great help.”

Louie stood stony before these old lines.

“Is she fond of the children?” inquired the second lady turning to Henny with a twitch, for like all ladies she prided herself on getting on well with the little ones. The wide-eyed Louie gave no answer. Henny shifted impatiently,

“I don’t know, I’m sure; I don’t know what she likes. She’s a secretive child.”

“But I hope you can trust her with the little ones,” said the first severely, “such a big girl!”

“Oh, you could trust her if she didn’t always have her nose stuck in a book,” Henny exclaimed, getting out of patience with the women who were worrying one of their favorite subjects.

“Too much poring over books is bad for the eyes,” confided the mustard-hatted woman demurely.

“Oh, we take great care of the children’s eyes,” Henny assured her with sudden insolence. “Come along, Louie,” and with two dignified nods and a sweet “thank you” to the butcher, she swept out of the shop, saying, “Let’s hurry along: I’ve no time to waste.” A few steps away she cried, “Silly old gobblers with their dirty hair like a haystack in a fit. Imagine a woman that age with a yellow hat perched on her bun. Making up to me and making eyes, Mrs. Pollit this and that. I don’t want their sticky beaks prying into my children. And it makes me mad I have to drag a monster girl like you round with me in that outfit because your father won’t let me dress you properly. Now they’re probably cackling behind my back and calling me a stepmother. It makes me sick. What were you doing all that time with that skinny gutter rat?”

“Can we look in the animal shop, Mother?”

“As if you didn’t have enough stinking beasts at home. This afternoon.”

The river gleamed at the bottom, as they walked down the avenue to the next car stop; at the foot of the street was a bare tree. They saw the blue-painted pet shop from across the street, because Henny wanted to see what was on at the cinema, and, yielding to the child’s fever, Henny crossed the street and allowed her to pore over the animals until the car came in sight. Getting into the car, Louie slipped on her turned heel and went sprawling “in full sight of the whole car, covering me with embarrassment,” as Henny put it; and a pleasant-faced, middle-aged gentleman came to the rescue, taking off his hat to Henny. In the car Henny met a neighbor, whom she detested and called an old upholstered frump, Mrs. Bolton, in fact; but each woman at once became tenderly confidential with the other, and a long discussion ensued about the awkwardness of young girls, and yet the impossibility of sending “young girls” about the city alone. This was but a prelude to Mrs. Bolton’s searching questions about Mr. Pollit in his absence; and Henny, with a great degree of wifely pride and modesty, retailed all Sam’s political opinions and described his work with the Anthropological Mission in the Pacific.

“You must be very proud of your husband,” the woman remarked with affectation.

“Oh, I am,” Henny answered, with perfect good grace, “I think he is a remarkable man, he works so hard, and no one can shake him from his opinions. He would not change his opinion for anyone, once he had one. Samuel does not really care for success, but for science and getting at the truth of things. I think he is a really remarkable man; but I suppose that’s foolish of me.”

Mrs. Bolton’s cheerfulness shriveled perceptibly, but they went on “la-di-da-ing,” as Henny called it, until Henny unexpectedly got out at the White House. This enchanted Louie, who at once started looking for the squirrels.

“I could have slapped her face,” cried Henny, “old upholstered busybody, prying and poking, ‘What is Mr. Pollit doing now?’ ” she mimicked. “She had better find out what her daughter is doing now, running round with other women’s husbands: I wonder she dares to look me in the face, or any woman. If my daughter did that, I’d stay at home. A woman with a daughter like that pawing my daughter. I was simply fuming and it was all I could do to be decent to her.”

The morning was full of excitement, with its infinite and mysteriously varied encounters, Henny giving battle on great provocation and invariably coming off victorious. This glorious, mettlesome morning was capped by Henny’s being very charming and disarming to a shoe salesman and getting Louie a new pair of scuffless shoes. In her new shoes, Louie was allowed to go to the Museum to study the exhibit of local fauna and flora, in order to get up a satisfactory nature report to send to the greedy Sam, far off in foreign jungles.

After assiduous scribbling in a new five-cent notebook, a deadly horror overcame her, the nausea of museums, and the “nature record” had to stop there, where she was taken by sickness. But after that, in obedience to Sam’s further desires, she dropped in at the Bureau of Fisheries to see Dr. Philibert, her father’s other self, in the well-known cave of aquaria, where she ran across various characters of the legend; for instance, Crazy-Daisy, who stared at her very hard but did not acknowledge her, and Dear Old Ratty, who rushed up to her babbling, to pump her hand and ask after “my old friend Sam.” His thin neck wobbled in its loose halter, just as Sam showed them in mimicry. Then, having “come into contact with people,” according to Sam’s orders, and “having begun her little life journey through the highways and byways,” as he put it, having borne Sam’s messages of high good will and cheer to various officers in his Department (while thoroughly convinced of the absurdity of these verbiages), Louie went home satisfied, walking to the old Rock Creek double bridge, along Pennsylvania Avenue, thick strewn with leaves. At home she was in command until six, when Hazel came home in a good temper.

Hazel, though forty-eight, had a young man; though a vixen (in Louie’s opinion), she had been loved by this young man for nearly twenty years and had been engaged to him for fifteen years. But, as it was explained carefully to everyone who came to the house, Hazel was obliged to wait until she could not have children before she could marry Mr. Gray, because Mr. Gray was a Protestant and Hazel’s priest would not let her children be Protestants.

When Henny came home, she and Hazel discussed the whole thing again; and Hazel, flushed, announced that she had agreed to marry Mr. Gray this year. They would go back to Charlestown, whence Hazel had come many, many years ago, to be the Collyer kitchenmaid, and live on Mr. Gray’s apple orchard. The evening buzzed with visions of Hazel’s future happiness and old evening of life as Mrs. Gray amidst fat apple trees.

“Perhaps you will be sorry you waited so long,” Henny said rather mournfully to her old crony.

“No,” Hazel shook her still black head. “When I see what you’ve been through with that man and his parcel of children, Henny, I think I’m better off. It’s no deprivation.”

“You won’t always think so,” said Henny, “you wait and see.”

“With Mr. Gray I will have everything I want,” said Hazel firmly.

“And what about me? I’ll have to wrestle with these children alone again,” said Henny, “and me half gone to another one. Hazel, you must wait at least till I’m up and about. What difference does it make to you? You’ve waited so long.”

Hazel colored a little and it looked as though a tiff were blowing up, but Hazel cooled down again and told Henny she was a selfish girl, but that she would wait until Pollit came home.

“But Pollit and his Pollit relations I can’t abide,” declared Hazel with a spot on her cheeks, “and if I’m obliged to live in the house with that man, I’ll say something we’ll all be sorry for. He’s ruined your life.”

Between Hazel and Henny, though, the stream ran deep and still: Henny only felt a little aggrieved that Hazel looked forward so eagerly to leaving her.

I
T WAS A COLD AND
windy March night. Four of the children sat round a wood fire in the long dining room on stools and hassocks, with Henny who had again queerly become a large woman, though her hands, feet, and face remained small and narrow. Ernest sat at the oak dining table bent over his schoolbooks, very industrious, and Louisa, excused from drying the dishes, was copying the last of her “Georgetown Record” of birds, insects, and plants, which was supposed to be a daybook of observations, closed each month and sent on, but which she had again got from the Museum. The house was cold away from the fire and the children’s bodies made a fire screen; they were toasted in front while chills ran down their spines. Louie had on her now shabby coat as she worked. Henny, sitting at the end of the table nearest the fire, had before her a child’s mattress newly covered with ticking which she was tacking and tufting with a great steel needle. As she worked she execrated the work still to do, the coldness of the house, her poverty, her fatigue, and the infinite household tasks that lay before her. The children used to this running commentary, pegged away at the letters they were writing to their father. Henny groaned and cursed Sam’s orders from afar, the squeaking pens, and cried, “Darn it!” whenever she stabbed her finger by mistake.