The Man Who Loved Children (52 page)

“They are early,” said Sam. “What is it, Looloo? See if you know.”

She hesitated and flushed, then said, “
Dactylometra?
”

“
Dactylometra quinquecirrha,
in the Chrysaora stage, thirty-two marginal lappets; you only get the forty-eight lappets and forty tentacles in the regions of greater salinity. You know, Looloo, I think we should begin to keep a salinity record of our poor little crick! Why shouldn’t you turn out the Spa House Journal, or Natural History of Spa House, like Selborne, and you can put in the human beasts, too, what inhabit the area, or human ecology.” He laughed into her face, with his sorcery: “Loo, you and me is going places, but good places. Now, take this: as far as I know, this yer form hasn’t been recorded at this time of year: and in my humble opinion it presages an abnormal run in the bay. We will see. The daughter of a friend of mine has a job measuring the height of water in the Shenandoah—heow would you like a jeob like that, Lazybone?”

“All right!”

Sam laughed. The water was almost smooth, with long splinter-shaped ripples, and the long, delicate shells of rowboats stood obliquely along the near jetties, which were mere sticks and runways. Two handsome steam yachts were anchored in close, and a small two-master with a schooner prow. Over the low houses and bare trees rose the bell dome of Bancroft Hall. Everything was ships, shipping, and the sea. On the left hand were the shore houses (of which Spa House was one), grassy dead ends, and tree-topped bluffs around the little pooling creek.

“Lovely,” said Sam sniffing, “lovely; came the northeast monsoon perhaps—but it blew this little Malay into a quiet harbor. Despite the troubles that, you know so well, Looloo, have cast shadows on a life that was meant to be all sunshine, we will do well here.”

They went along towards the Market Space and then Sam swerved left.

“Why are you going here?” asked Louie suddenly.

Sam smiled, “Hesk no kvastions en I tal no lies.”

“You’re going to Clare’s place,” she said in fright. Sam smiled,

“I am a-follerin’ my nose, and you is a-follerin’ your poor little Sam.”

Louie wrenched his hand, “No, Dad, don’t go there: she doesn’t want us to, they’re too poor. She doesn’t want us to go.”

“Poverty isn’t a disgrace,” Sam remonstrated, “I’m surprised atcha, Looloo-dirl. I hope Clare isn’t as stupid as that.”

She dragged at his arm in a frenzy, “Dad, please don’t go.” She had gone scarlet, “Please don’t.”

He flew into a temper and grumbled, “Of all the stoopids I ever met; now her father can’t see her best friend. I want to get to know your Claribella. I’m sure she’s a good girl, and when you told me she was orphaned twice, and was such a good kid, she’s the right girl for Looloo to know and git some foolish notions out of her head.”

Louisa sulked. When they came to the weather-gray cabin, Sam went in the little picket gate and knocked at the side of the open door. Louie, waiting on the street, saw Clare’s shape in the dark hallway and then Clare, standing oafishly in the doorway, taking in the scene. She was barefooted, and wore only a ragged sweater and skirt; her arms, bare to the shoulder, were covered with suds.

“I’m Louie’s father,” explained Sam, pleasantly, “and Louie talked my two ears flat about you, so I thought I’d come along and take you out for an ice-cream soda.” Clare seemed pleased, stood considering, gave Louie a glance, and then with a bound, declared that she would come with them, but they must wait till she got into her bonnet and shawl. It was hideous, thought Louie. She did not wish to share Clare with her father. Sam, on the other hand, glowed with paternity; here he was, not only hands, ears, eyes, wisdom, and virtue for his little daughter (being buffeted too hard by the northeast monsoon), but he was friends and friendship too, ice-cream sodas and Saturday afternoons. There was nothing he would not do for Louie to bring their two worlds together.

“I like your Clare,” said Sam. Louie perseveringly skinned her shoe on the curb.

They went up Main Street and into an Italian ice-cream parlor and restaurant. Sam was very jolly, calling the waiter “yon devious devil-may-care Dago,”
sotto voce,
and saying all he could to make Clare giggle. When the ice creams came and they were sucking at them, he became serious and asked Clare what she would do for a living. “My living will be paying the rent,” said Clare. Sam said that he did not know what Looloo (at this name Clare opened her eyes and then smiled secretly) would do, “because she was at time of writin’ a heap of muddleheadedness, but it would parse over, no doubt.” The two girls looked at each other over their sodas and giggled. Sam smiled, too, at their bent heads and was encouraged to say that “at the momuent Looloo thought of nothin’ but eating of all the dickshunaries she could find and went around chock-full of big words aspewin’ em out and destroyin’ the peas of mind of the famerlee.” Clare stuck to her soda but began to gulp dangerously. Sam approved of this enthusiasm and declared that Louie “went in for Christian martyrdom on a much larger scale than them aneshunt Dagos (by which I mean no more nor less than the Roman-arounds), and I really believe thet thet Jo Bunyan what made Uncle Dan wear shoes two sighs too big was the maggit what had got into Louie’s brain.” At this Louie left off laughing and looked thunder at the happy Sam. Clare went on tee-heeing to herself over the soda.

“I’m telling you, Clare,” said Sam, genteelly, leaving off his Artemus Ward imitation for a moment, “because I know you’re Looloo’s best friend and maybe you can talk some reason into her skull: though I doubt it.” He grinned and slewed his bright blue eyes towards Louisa, expecting her to be full of his fun. He was surprised to see she was not. He began a sprightly inquisition, looking quickly from one to the other, asking, How was Aidoneus, and, Did Clare adore old Aiden the way Looloo did, and, Did Clare think Old Aido was a good woman as well as an allfired beauty, “for beauty lives with kindness,” and it was impossible to get anything out of the lyrical Loo but moonlight and roses.

“Do you like her, Clarior-e-tenebris?” he inquired, solicitously, “because I’ll take your word for it: I can see you’re as quick on the trigger as I am myself.”

“She’s a good scout,” said Clare.

“She’s a good scout, that’s fine: that’s wery satisfactory, wery with a wee: though who is she scoutin’ for, that’s the question?”

The conversation lapsed. Sam, after a hesitation, invited Clare to have another soda, which she eventually accepted and then Louie too had another. This uncommon blowout delighted Louie; she loved her father at present: and when he began to speak again, in that low, humming, cello voice and with that tender, loving face he had when beginning one of his paeans or dirges, she listened as well as Clare.

“If I had my way—if I were a Stalin or Hitler, Clarigold—I would abolish school altogether for children like you and Looloo, and would form them into communities with a leader, something like I am myself, a natural leader, for man only learns in communities, he is a social animal. I love children and what I should like best, what I should love, Claribella, would be to form the Eastport, or Annapolis, Junior Community and introduce a totally new curriculum. In it the children would wander by the forests and fields and get close to their denizens, the fauna and flora of stream, thicket, and plain—they would be nature lovers, bird lovers. (For don’t think I don’t understand this foolish little passion of Looloo’s: it is good in itself, it needs only direction: I am not unsympathetic as she thinks in her poor big silly obstinate skull I) The system we have now is good at best for making ditchdiggers, clerks, and schoolmarms—not that I am one to laugh at schoolmarms—they are in the noblest profession in the world! But we must follow the curriculum of Nature herself.

They must be bird lovers, nature lovers, water lovers, fish lovers, those schoolmarms and dominies: they must not teach formally, but Nature herself must teach
them
to love her and to fossick in her treasury until they find out, slowly but oh, with how much wonder! the inexpressible beauties and glories of her secrets—though they are open secrets to who can see. We unconsciously understand many of her laws—the thing is to bring them to consciousness, to know her, to follow her. Then we should have a different generation, the free air for our arts and sciences, the free use of natural gifts, free speech, few laws, free government freely elected and changing frequently, and phalansteries here, and law in the heart of nature where naturalists and poets of nature develop. It will come. In the meantime I have thought much over Looloo and will put her among the aristocrats of the human mind. I can show her the light and many like her. What terrible losses do we endure in our foolish, cut-and-dried system, when upon natural genius they wish to put a government stamp with a number. I am only speaking of government schools—I am utterly indifferent to institutions run for class, greed, and snobbery. You and I and Looloo, Clarigold, could make the world over: it would be a glorious world then, the world of men and women of good will. We want it; others want it. Why cannot we have it? Yes, we will have it, perhaps in our own lifetime. Only we must get away from this dry-as-dust system which crushes the inspiration, the faith, dreams, hopes, aspirations of youth.”

Gravely Clare burbled through her straw in the bottom of her empty soda glass.

“Looloo, for all her gloom and obstinacy,” said Sam, in a yearning voice, “is beginning to understand me, whether she will or not—though why she fights against me, I can’t make out—though I daresay she has told you a little since you are her best friend and playmate, Clare, about the little troubles we have both had—little troubles, scarcely worth mentioning, in a lifetime, just a little stone Fate put in the path of both of us because we are one nature. But she thinks the way I do, or is beginning to: and that is all I ask. I want you to understand, Clare,” he continued, pleading, “because I see Louie has not gone astray, she has chosen aright: you are the right friend for her, and I hope you and Looloo and I will have many intimate talks and walks together. For all education is outside, not inside, the schoolroom.”

Clare sat very gravely tracing designs in the wet on the table. Once she raised her eyes and looked at Louie curiously, but Louie was not looking at her. Sam sighed with pleasure.

“Well,” he said, stirring, “I suppose we better be stretching our legs, as well as our minds: what say, girls? Shall we walk a little?” He did not release them for a moment but walked them jollily round State Circle and through the retired green grounds of St. John’s College, discoursing on everything that met his eye—a stray dog, and the inroads of worthless dogs on planted deer, bred bobwhites, and all wild life of their state and how all dogs should be abolished or at most held on a leash (dogs had many other vices: they carried hydatids, bred lice, bit men, howled at night, made the fair countryside hideous with their wolvish brigandage in the guise of house protection, were vilely lubricous in decent streets, fouled footways, ate their own vomit, smelled to high heaven, and fawned and crawled on man as no decent-spirited beast could!). Then he saw the great liberty oak and sang, in their ears, an ode to that; and so on, for an hour or two, during which Clare mumbled and sometimes grinned and Louie looked stonily ahead or desperately aside.

Soon Clare had to go home, but Sam took Louie’s arm and they walked slowly home together, Louie in utmost silence, and Sam talking, pleading, holding her ear, trying to rouse her to sympathy and enthusiasm.

“You will soon understand many things, Looloo-girl.”

She smiled sourly.

“You will be like me!”

She grinned, “How do you know I will be like you?” They had paused on the Eastport Bridge to look over to Spa House. Ernie and the twins were splashing about in the water, rushing out on the beach to shiver, flinging their arms about and rushing back into the warmish water again. At the same moment, Henny appeared running, and began beckoning with her arms and calling them out of the water.

“I don’t want you to be like me,” cried Sam, annoyed; “don’t be such a dope. I only want you to think the way I do: and not even that if you have good reasons for your convictions.”

Louie grinned sarcastically, “You say so: but you’re always trying to make me think like you; I can’t.”

He became silent and walked along, dropping her hand, in a dignified stride. She felt terribly ashamed of herself: why couldn’t she be civil, after the four ice-cream sodas for her and Clare? But as sure as he opened his mouth, she knew, she would begin to groan and writhe like any Prometheus; she smiled apologetically, “It’s the nature of the beast.”

Sam softened and looked down at her, “Why must you always be such an obstinate cuss?”

“I don’t know.”

“I have such dreams for you, Looloo. Don’t always oppose me. I have enough opposition. Why aren’t you frank with your dad? Why don’t you tell me what you are always mooning about? You can come to me with everything. I thought at one moment that the demon had done her work, and that the forces of sin, crime, and evil had torn my daughter from me; and that even the onset of womanhood was making you more bitter. But the love you show for your teacher tells me that you are not like that: it is just a passing phase, a storm—let us say cat’s-paw of the pubescent period. I know you have little troubles general to your age and sex, that no doubt upset you. And then there is the situation at home.”

Louie’s lip trembled, “When I begin to get near home, I begin to tremble all over—I don’t know why. I never told any one what it is like at home.”

“That is right, Looloo: a merry heart goes all the way; there is nothing we cannot forget if we have a high ideal fixed before us.”

She said in a rebellious tone, “That is not the reason: I do not say it because no one would believe me!”

Spring was coming and Sam was very restless. For weeks he would love Gillian Roebuck; then he would go to see Saul Pilgrim’s sister, Mrs. Virginia Prescott, a widow, in Francis Street, near Druid Hill Park. She sat amongst the rich and plentiful furniture left to her by the extinct Prescott and “planned” little meals for friends and let rooms. At times she gave music lessons. Sam thought her a wonderful little woman, and she obviously admired him, but in a respectable, respectful style. She was a round-faced, dark-eyed, dark-haired woman (like all Sam’s women), with nice false teeth, a short thick neck, short, thick bosom and little waist, much corseted: she was of medium height and very light on her feet. Sam did not love her, but when his feeling for the nature-spelled girl, Gillian, became too strong, he went and talked to Virginia. He was unable to see Gillian because they both felt they were too conspicuous in either Baltimore or Washington, and Sam despised hole-in-the-corner meetings: it was not worthy of them.