The Man Who Loved Children (9 page)

On Sunday morning the sun bolted up brash and chipper from the salad beds of the Atlantic and with a red complexion came loping towards them over the big fishing hole of the Chesapeake. Before it was light the dooryard thrush began to drop his song,
quirt-quirt,
hesitant, fretful, inquiring, angelically solitary, from the old elm across the street. Sam whistled to him and then nestlings fluttered, a beast fell to the ground, the early birds got to work, and presently, by hearty creaking and concerted peeping, they and Sam made the sky pale and flagged the daystar. Sam was always anxious for morning. He was greedy for the daylight world, because the fevers of the dark, and the creatures real to man’s sixth, inward, dark sense, which palpitates in such an agony about three o’clock in the morning, all disappeared at the dark’s first fading. When the first ray came, he stood on feet of clay in a world of clay; the dread other worlds of dreams were gone beyond comparison. In these fresh summer mornings (it was fresh on the hill) when the earth perspired profusely, Sam would often get up before daybreak, patter downstairs in bare feet, just wearing bathing pants, and would go out on to the lawn, getting ready for some job, getting the animals up, or standing under the trees, whistling to the birds. But not today, because he had stayed awake most of the night.

It was six-thirty by the alarm clock. Sam began whistling softly through his teeth the tune of,

One evening in the month of May

(Johnny get your gun, get your gun!)—

and waited. There was a grunt next door in the twins’ room. The twins were turning over, trying to dig shuteye out of their pillows, closing their ears. Upstairs, Ernie’s voice joined in,

I met ole Satan by the way.

There was a slippery sound like a little fish flopping on the stairs: that was four-year-old Tommy hurrying down to his mother’s room. Louisa, from her bed across the sitting room, said sleepily, “Shh! Shh! It’s early!”

Sam waited a moment, thinking, Will I whistle up the Gemini or my Darkeyes? Of all these little affections, he was most sure of Evelyn, his pet, a queer little dove, who in her eight years had never been naughty and who bubbled with laughter when he grinned at her, hung her head, cried, when he scowled. He called her his little woman,
Little-Womey.
He began,

“Little-Womey, Little-Womey, git-up, git-up!”

“Sh, sh!” said Louie in whose room Evie slept. No answer.

“Is you awake, Little-Womey, or is you in the arms of Morpheus?”

No answer: but by almost imperceptible noises Sam could tell that everyone was awake now, listening. There was an exclamation in his wife’s room downstairs. Henrietta had been awake for hours, as long as Sam himself, knitting, reading, waiting for her morning tea.

“Womey, Womey, c’mon, c’mon, giddap for your pore little Sam.”

Evelyn giggled. He heard it all right and insisted, “C’mon, Womey: come on: do my head, come, scratch my head. Come, do m’head: do m’yed, do m’yed. Come on, Penthestes; co-ome on, Penthestes.”

His voice had fallen to the lowest seductive note of yearning. Evie chuckled with doubt, pleasure. She had many petnames, any, in fact, that occurred to Sam, such as Penthestes (a chickadee) or Troglodytes (the house wren), names of engaging little dusky birds or animals. Saul, the more self-possessed of the twins, shouted to Evelyn, while the other, Little-Sam, who was his father’s copy, shouted out that he was awake. Their mother, in her bed, grumbled again. Sam was enjoying himself and now began to whine,

“Womey won’t come en scratch m’yed: Womey is mean to her pore little dad.”

Evie jumped out of the covers and ran across Sam’s sitting room. At his bedroom door she giggled, eyes flying, fat brown starfish hands together on the dark mouth.

“I heard you the first time, Taddy.”

“C’mon,” he begged, full of love for her. She jumped onto his bed and crouched on his pillow behind his head: there she began to massage his head and twist his thick silky hair. He closed his eyes in ease and asked in an undertone,

“Is Looloo up yet?”

“No, Taddy.”

Sam whistled an ascending chromatic scale which was Louisa’s whistle, and the same scale descending, which was Ernest’s whistle, Evie, imitating her mother, protested,

“She is asleep, Taddy: let her sleep. She needs it.” Sam took no notice but went on in an insinuating, teasing voice,

“Loobyloo! Loo-oobyloo! Loozy! Tea!”

Although Louisa did not answer she was at that moment crawling soundlessly out of bed. She heard him urging Evie, “Go on, Womey, call her Loozy.”

“No, Taddy, she doesn’t like it.”

“Go on, when I tahzoo [tells you].”

“No, Taddy, she can hear.”

“Loo-hoozy! Loozy! Tea-heehee!”

Out of the tail of her eye Evelyn saw Louisa flash across the landing to the stairs. “She went,” she chanted soothingly, “she went.”

“This Sunday-Funday has come a long way,” said Sam softly: “it’s been coming to us, all day yesterday, all night from the mid-Pacific, from Peking, the Himalayas, from the fishing grounds of the old Leni Lenapes and the deeps of the drowned Susquehanna, over the pond pine ragged in the peat and the lily swamps of Anacostia, by scaffolded marbles and time-bloodied weatherboard, northeast, northwest, Washington Circle, Truxton Circle, Sheridan Circle to Rock Creek and the blunt shoulders of our Georgetown. And what does he find there this morning as every morning, in the midst of the slope, but Tohoga House, the little shanty of Gulliver Sam’s Lilliputian Pollitry—Gulliver Sam, Mrs. Gulliver Henny, Lugubrious Louisa, whose head is bloody but unbowed, Ernest the calculator, Little-Womey—” Evie laughed. “—Saul and Sam the boy-twins and Thomas-snowshoe-eye, all sun-tropes that he come galloping to see.”

“He doesn’t come to see us,” deprecated Evie.

“No, he could live without us,” Sam agreed. He opened his eyes, “Whar my red book?” His bedside table was littered with pamphlets from the Carnegie Peace Foundation, scientific journals, and folders from humanitarian leagues. On top lay three magazines. Sam picked out one which was folded back and laid his forefinger on the pretty, sober woman pictured above the title.

“Bin readin’ fine stor-wy, Little Womey,” he said, “ ’bout a fine woman en a fine little girl. Good sweet story—makes your pore little Sam bust into tears.”

“Is it sad, Taddy?”

“It is sad and glad. It is just like our poor little silly, funny human life, but it comes to a good end because they are good people underneath all their poor willfulnesses and blindnesses. They really love each other, although they
do
show a tendency to scratch out each other’s eyes at moments: en then they find they don’t hate each other as much as they thought. People are like that, my
Troglodytes minor.
Love people, little Darkeyes, always be in love with human beings and you will be happy. And what is more, much more, you will do good.”

“Taddy,” she began, hesitating, “can Isabel come in today?”

“Mebbe,” said Sam. “Oh, mwsk, mwsk!” He kissed a girl figured in a corset advertisement, “I’ll marry her! Hello, beautiful! Look at the girl with da spaghett’—mwsk, mwsk, mwsk! I love her. I’ll marry her too. Mwsk!

Oh, woman in our hours of ease

Uncertain, coy and hard to please:

Oh, woman in our hours of ease

But when the time comes round for chow

Oh, woman in our hours of ease

A ministering angel thou.

Look at this one with the mayonnaise. Mwsk! Here’s a knockout. Mwsk!”

“You missed that one, Taddy.”

“Not her! She’s a fright: she’s a holy terror. No ma’am: I like my girls often and I likes ’em pretty. En look at this one. Holy Methusalem! He must have had his mother-in-law staying with him. This one would frighten a screech owl at midnight on Bear Mountain. The question is, how bare? Mwsk! Oh, raccoons and rattlesnakes! This one knocks my eyes out! I only got one eye. I can’t stand it. I must marry her at once and get back my eye.”

Evie giggled, giggled, shivering with pleasure. The twin boys and Ernest had crowded into the room, and craned and gleamed round the bed, saying, “Oo, not that one, she’s ugly.”

“Here’s a peach,” said Ernest. Ernest was nearly ten.

“This one’s a peacherino, though, she’s mine,” Sam said. He kissed the cocktail heroine several times, “young and juicy, a ripe tomato,” he continued wickedly, grinning at the boys, while Evie pored over the picture. “Mwsk! Here’s a little ducky, she looks naughty but she’s a good girl really.”

“How do you know?” Evie stared at the girl with thin legs in silk stockings and flying crayon billows.

Sam teased, “They don’t write stories about really bad girls, Little-Womey, remember that. And they never make a really bad girl pretty, even if they do write about her for the sake of the truth. That’s because they really want people to be happy and good, and want us to believe that the beautiful are the good and vice versa. Because, if we believe it, it will come true—”

“Here’s one you can kiss, Dad,” cried Saul, excitedly.

“Aren’t we going to scrape and paint this morning, Pad?” Ernest wanted to know.

“When the tea comes—big news, big news,” said Sam, raising himself in bed and looking round at them. They fawned round his bed, expectant.

“You’re going to get a new car?” Saul hazarded; but Ernest knew it was no such thing.

From there they could hear the kettle lid hopping madly on the stove. Sam whistled Louie’s whistle and shouted,

“Loozy! Water’s a-bilin!”

This was followed by another shout from below, his wife’s, and a third, a soprano hail came from the attic floor, where Sam’s youngest sister, Bonnie, was still abed; she sang, “Hold everything! I’m coming down.”

“In the sweet by-and-by,” said Sam to the children and winked. The kettle stopped bobbling. Bonnie shouted,

“Ki-hids? Louie?”

“Stay in bed, Bon,” Sam replied: “Looloo’s making the tea.” He explained to the children, “Bonniferous might as well snooze an hour longer da fornin [this morning]: Sunday a funday for all hands.”

“But Looloo is working,” objected Ernest.

“Looloo is asleep too, on her feet,” grinned Sam. Now there was another shout from belowstairs,

“Tea up or down?”

“Up.”

In a minute they heard the jingle of tea-things and Louie’s grunting. She was a heavy girl, overgrown for her years. She came in with her large fat face pink, but glum. She put the tray down on the bed beside Sam’s calves and poured out all round. When she came down from the attic, where she had carried Aunt Bonnie’s, Sam sang out,

“Whar’s yourn, Loogoobrious?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Whyn’t you bring it along? Ernest-Paine-Pippy! Go and get Louie’s tea for her.”

“I’ve got to make the porridge,” she cried; and so got away. She tripped on the oilcloth at the head of the stairs.

“Johnny-head-in-air!” called Sam, “c’mere a minute: be here with your father when he tahzem [tells them] the great news! Kids, your Sam’s going to Malaya with the Smithsonian Expedition, like I always told you I would.”

“When?” asked Louie morosely.

“Don’t know yet,” he said: “will you be glad, Looloo, to see your poor little Sam go away to furrin parts?”

“No.”

“Will you miss your poor little dad?”

“Yes,” she lowered her eyes in confusion.

“Bring up your tea, Looloo-girl: I’m sick, hot head, nedache [headache], dot pagans in my stumjack [got pains in my stomach]: want my little fambly around me this morning. We’ll have a corroboree afterwards when I get better. Mother will make the porridge.” He was begging her, yearning after her.

“Mother told me to make it,” she said obstinately.

He gave a sudden impatient glance,

“Go ahead then! I’ve never met anyone so cussed in all my born days!”

Lowering, she turned and trudged out. Halfway downstairs a smile flashed into her face—she was free! Upstairs her father was singing and chattering with her brothers and sister; her mother and aunt were in bed reading; the morning was beginning in slow time, and her book for which she had an unconquerable passion, the same
Legend of Roncesvalles
which she was now reading for the third time, was open on the washtub beside the stove. She could read it as she sifted in the oatmeal. It was a glorious hot morning; the birds were now in the full middle of their music. The shadows were diluted light; the air was hot and moist; sweet air from flowers and humus and pines drifted in. The old wood of the house smelled precious, and even the smell of oatmeal slowly coming to the boil was wholesome.

When the porridge was made, Louie took her book in to the showerhouse built at the end of the veranda, and propped it on a crossbeam while she took her cold shower. She stood under the water, stirring gently, and her wet fingers pulped the pages as she turned. Outside the house already resounded to their shouts.

Bonnie, with her silver-gilt hair in a pageboy bob, skipped round the kitchen getting breakfast and singing “
Deh, vieni, non tardar
.” Sam and the boys were in the washhouse, mixing the paint, and Evie was laying the table in the long dining room. A burst of song came from out of doors, the father and his fledglings starting up with “Mid pleasures and palaces”; and when they came to the chorus, Evie could be heard fluting away, “Home, home, sweet, sweet home!” The birds, cheered by all this, began to sing madly like a thousand little harmless brass devils under the leaves; hearing which, Louie at once put on the record that always made the birds begin to cheep, “Papageno, Papagena!” Henrietta sang out,

“He can’t open an eye without having the whole tribe jigging and buzzing round him.”

Coming from the shower, Louie saw through the door Tommy sitting in his mother’s armchair, playing with her solitaire cards. A musky smell always came from Henrietta’s room, a combination of dust, powder, scent, body odors that stirred the children’s blood, deep, deep. It had as much attraction for them as Sam’s jolly singing, and when they were allowed to, they gathered in Henrietta’s room, making hay, dashing to the kitchen to get things for her, asking her if she wanted her knitting, her book, tumbling out into the hall and back, until it was as if she had twenty children, their different voices steaming, bubbling, and popping, like an irrepressible but inoffensive crater. Henrietta would not have them on the bed with her, though. She sat there by herself, in the center, propped on two or three pillows, in an old dressing gown, with her glasses on and her gray-speckled black hair drawn tightly back in a braid. Beside her would be some darning, or a library book sprawling halfway down the bed where she had thrown it in disgust, with a “Such rot!”