CHAPTER VI
THE NEW ARRIVAL
Mindful of her promise to Mrs. Trotter, Persis had looked through her piece-bag apparently with excellent results. For the little garments symbolic of humanity's tenderest hopes, the garments that are to clothe the unborn child, were growing rapidly under her skilful fingers.
The first slip had been severely plain, and then Persis, yielding to a temptation most women will understand, began to fashion scraps of embroidery and odds and ends of lace and insertion into tiny yokes and bands. After many a long day's work she sat by the shaded lamp finishing the diminutive garments with stitches worthy of a bridal outfit.
"Who is it that's expecting?" Joel demanded one evening, his sex not proving an impregnable armor against the assaults of curiosity.
The brevity of Persis' answer indicated reluctance to import the desired information. "Mis' Trotter."
"Bartholomew Trotter's wife? And of course she's going to pay you for all this fiddling and folderol."
Persis accepted the implied rebuke meekly. "I guess I'm paying myself in the satisfaction I get out of it. I started in to stitch up some slips on the machine, but I just couldn't stand it. Machine sewing's all right for grown folks, but it does seem that when a little child's getting ready to come into the world, there'd ought to be a needle weaving back and forth, and tender thoughts and hopes weaving along with it. And specially if a baby's going to be born into a home like the Trotters', you can't grudge it a little bit of beauty to start out with."
"Well, I must say it's lucky that so far you women have been kept where you belong. Weaving hopes, indeed! As if 'twould make any difference to that young one of Trotter's whether it was rigged out like a millionaire baby or wrapped up in a horse blanket."
Persis sewed on unmoved. "I don't say the baby'd know the difference.
It's just my way of showing respect for the human race."
Her industry was not premature. One Saturday night she carried to the Trotters' squalid home a daintily fashioned, freshly laundered outfit which took Mrs. Trotter's restrained and self-respecting gratitude quite by storm. Forgetting for once the public obligation to provide for the needs of her family present and to come, she accepted the gift in a silence vastly more eloquent than her usual volubility. Then the muscles of her scrawny throat twitched, and a tear splashed down on the soft cambric. Nor did she, during the interview, recover her usual poise sufficiently to refer to the obligation under which Bartholomew and herself were placing the community; and Persis returned home in a mood of even more than her customary tolerance.
That was Saturday night. Early Monday morning little Benny brought word that his mother was sick and wanted Miss Persis to come right away. Joel had not risen, and Persis scrawled a hasty note explaining her abrupt departure and set out for the Trotter establishment, stopping on the way to ask a favor of Susan Fitzgerald.
Susan was finishing her early breakfast, her hair still wound about her crimping pins, the painfully strained and denuded effect which resulted being a necessary preliminary to the rippling luxuriance of the afternoon. Persis stated her errand tersely.
"Susan, they've sent for me from Trotters', and there's no telling when I'll be home. I wish you'd go up to the house, if you've nothing particular on hand and look after Joel. He's the helplessest man ever born when it comes to doing for himself."
In her complex excitement, Susan fluttered like an impaled butterfly. "Oh, dear me! I mean of course I will, Persis. But what do you want me to do?"
"Oh, just get his meals and amuse him till I get back. You can keep
Joel pretty cheerful if you'll let him unload all his notions on you.
Joel generally finds a good listener good comp'ny."
"And so poor Lizzie Trotter's going through that again," exclaimed Susan, momentarily forgetting her own prospective ordeal, in sympathy for the other woman's severer trial. "I don't want to accuse Divine Providence, but I must say it hardly seems fair to put all the responsibility for getting the children into the world off on women. If 'twas turn and turn about, now, I wouldn't say a word."
"I guess if that was the way of it, there'd never be more'n three in a family, and it took a sight of people to fill up the world, starting with the garden of Eden. Well, I must hurry, Susan. I won't be gone a mite longer'n I can help."
As Susan removed her crimping pins, her agitation grew. The favor Persis had asked so lightly, and she had granted so readily, took on a new aspect as she considered it. Susan shared the respect of Clematis for Joel Dale's intellectuality and stood rather in awe of his foibles. Her hands trembled as she arranged her undulating locks in the fashion ordinarily reserved for afternoons. Her cooking might not suit him. Her efforts to be entertaining might not measure up to his lofty standards. She quaked, picturing his possible displeasure. For this courageous champion of the rights of womankind who did not hesitate to call the Creator Himself to account for seeming injustice, became the meekest of the meek when confronted with the sex from which oppressors are made.
Susan's apprehensions were not so groundless as might be fancied. Joel Dale was in a very bad humor after he had finished reading his sister's note. Joel held the not unpopular theory that the supreme duty of woman is to make some man comfortable. Religion and philanthropy were legitimate diversions if not allowed to interfere with the higher claim. Even the exercise of talent might be tendered a patronizing approval, if this, too, knew its place. Joel was willing that Persis should utilize her gifts in earning his living provided she did not forget the complex ministrations involved in making him "comfortable." He was ready to allow her to help her poorer neighbors, so that she was never absent when he wanted her. But if that jealous divinity, his Comfort, were denied its due, the indulgent brother was lost in the affronted tyrant.
Poor Susan Fitzgerald found her tremors doubled by the sight of his lowering face. "Mr. Dale, I've come up to keep house for you to-day, seeing—seeing Persis has been called away." She blushed, realizing that Joel was undoubtedly in the secret of that errand. After forty years in a world where birth is the one inevitable human experience, aside from death, she had never been able to rid herself of the impression that it was essentially immodest.
Though the cloud of Jovian displeasure did not remove immediately from Joel's brow, his mood underwent an instant change. His sister had not been guilty of leaving him to shift for himself. The opportune appearance of Susan Fitzgerald indicated a proper regard for the masculine helplessness, which is also, by some obscure process of reasoning, the badge of masculine superiority. Moreover Susan's presence furnished the opportunity of setting forth in detail sundry theories which to Persis were an old story. To a gentleman of Joel's temperament, a new audience is at times a necessity.
"You won't have much trouble getting my meals," he assured her, his cold dignity thawing rapidly. "Just set on the dish of apples and nuts."
Susan's near-sighted eyes narrowed as she gazed at him. "You mean for dessert?"
"Dessert! When Adam and Eve started housekeeping do you s'pose they sat down to soup to begin with and wound up with pie? The Lord put 'em in a garden instead of a butcher's shop, because He wanted 'em to eat vegetable food and not poison themselves with dead animals." Joel's voice had grown almost cheerful. His ardor in the dissemination of his dietetic theories waxed and waned, but when there was a new observer to be impressed, he always found the crucifixion of his appetites well worth while. He seated himself at the table with a gesture which seemed to wave into some remote background the temptation of sausages and buckwheat cakes.
"No trouble for me. Just set on the nuts and apples, same as our ancestors ate before they got wiser'n their Creator and learned to cook their victuals. We're the only animals that ain't satisfied with raw food. And we're the only ones that are everlastingly kicking about indigestion."
"I declare!" exclaimed Susan Fitzgerald, carried away by this masterly logic. "You certainly have your own way of looking at subjects, Mr. Dale."
"Well, I'll admit that I'm not much at taking up with second-hand opinions. Now, here's another idea of mine." He held up a walnut between his thumb and finger. "There's a tree in that, ain't there?"
"Why, yes." Susan's ready admission gave every indication of a willingness to be impressed.
"Well, what's enough to give a start to a tree that may grow seventy feet or over, ought to start a man off to his day's work pretty well. That's my way of reasoning."
"But don't you feel an awful goneness after a breakfast like that?"
"Goneness!" Magnificently Joel waved away the suggestion. "With an apple and five or six good nuts inside me, I feel like I could run through a troop, as the psalmist says, and leap over a wall."
Susan's admiring murmur indicated that the sustaining effect of the diet Joel recommended was due less to its intrinsic virtue than to some unusual and dominating quality of Joel's personality. And Joel, struggling with a peculiarly tough Brazil nut, reflected that Susan Fitzgerald was an intelligent woman as well as an agreeable one.
The morning passed pleasantly for both. Susan possessed the gift which men have ever highly esteemed in the sex, the faculty of continued silence, combined with close attention. Some of Joel's theories impressed her as startling, but like many very proper people, Susan rather enjoyed being shocked, if the sensation was not overdone. Whether she murmured approval or blushed in decorous protest, it was plain that she found Joel's monologues immensely interesting. She could hardly believe her ears when the clock struck twelve.
Susan brought the nuts and apples out again after their brief period of retirement, and seated herself at the table, to share the Eden-like repast. "You'd be an awful easy man to cook for, Mr. Dale," she said, with a glance which in another woman would have been coquettish.
But the arrow glanced harmless. Joel's mood was abstracted. Not for some time had he put into practise his theories regarding uncooked food, and his rebellious appetite craved more stimulating fare. He munched his nuts with distracting memories of yesterday's pot roast. He found himself resenting Susan's eager compliance. She should have insisted on preparing him a good meal—good from her standpoint—and as a gentleman he could have done no less than show his appreciation by eating it.
For once Joel had lost interest in his own eloquence. Inward voices were protesting against this return to the fare which had satisfied Father Adam. When he retired to the armchair, after dinner, and relapsed into a sulky silence, Susan remembered that the obligation to amuse him was also nominated in the bond. Luckily his tastes were literary, which rendered her task a simple one.
Susan stepped into the tightly-closed, partially darkened parlor which never in the sultriest weather seemed wholly to lose the chill of its unwarmed winter days. The center of the room was occupied by a square table, on each corner of which lay a book, the four arranged with geometrical nicety. Susan was too familiar with Clematis traditions not to know that the books on the center-table were seldom of a sort one would care to open, but as she lifted the nearest volume and saw that it was a collections of poems, she felt a comforting certainty that luck was with her.
"You're a great admirer of po'try, ain't you, Mr. Dale? I've always understood so."
With an effort Joel roused himself.
"Another has expressed my sentiments, Miss Fitzgerald.
"Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound.'"
"Then if you'd like, I'll read you a little so's to help pass the time." Susan seated herself near the window, cleared her throat and opening the volume at random, began in the self-conscious and unnatural voice characterizing ninety-nine people out of every hundred who attempt the reading of verse.
"'O there's a heart for every one
If every one could find it.
Then up and seek, ere youth is gone,
Whate'er the task, ne'er mind it.
For if you chance to meet at last
With that one heart intended—'"
Susan's voice had grown husky. She cleared her throat again. "I'm afraid I made a poor selection," she apologized. "You see I'm not as familiar with po'try as you are, Mr. Dale." She turned the leaves in a confusion that increased as her groping vision stumbled continually on lines startlingly sentimental.
"'Let thy love in kisses rain
On my cheeks and eye-lids pale.'"
Susan opened ten pages ahead and tried again.
"'When stars are in the quiet skies,
Then most I pine for thee.
Bend on me, then, thy tender eyes,
As stars look on the sea.'"
Joel's change of position was subtly suggestive of weariness. Susan whirled the leaves and took a desperate plunge.
"'Ask if I love thee? O, smiles can not tell
Plainer what tears are now showing too well.
Had I not loved thee my sky had been clear;
Had I not loved thee, I had not been here.'"
It was plainly impossible for a self-respecting single woman to continue. "Why, they're all silly," she exclaimed, with a little nervous giggle. Her face flamed. What was she to say next, not only to carry out Persis Dale's injunction, but to occupy the blank silence which contradictorily seemed echoing with that fateful refrain, "Had I not loved thee I had not been here."
When in doubt, play trumps. Susan Fitzgerald's chief interest in life was the question of woman's suffrage. And the confusion which had swept her mind bare of small talk, had not jostled her substantial ideas on the familiar theme. She determined to broach the subject delicately and with caution. If Joel cared for discussion, this would occupy a good portion of the afternoon, and be a sufficient antidote for her unfortunate poetical selections. It was even possible that a strong forceful presentation of the case might result in making a convert. Susan thrilled, realizing what such an accession would mean to the cause.
"Mr. Dale," she began, feeling her way to a tactful introduction. "I am sure you must have a pretty good opinion of women. A man with such a sister as you've got couldn't help it."
Her opening was unfortunate. No man is so reluctant to recognize feminine superiority as the one who profits most by the gifts of some woman. Joel's brow clouded, and his answer showed a cautious resolve not to be trapped into any compromising admission.
"Oh, I haven't anything against women folks. I've always thought the poet went too far when he said:
"'Mankind from Adam has been woman's fools.
Women from Eve have been the Devil's tools.'"
Despite the negative nature of this encouragement, Susan continued.
"I'm sure a fair-minded man like you are, Mr. Dale, wouldn't want to keep any woman out of what rightfully belonged to her. You'd want her to have a chance to fill her place in the world, wouldn't you?"
"Why, yes, I'd be in favor of that." Joel's voice was less positive than his words, owing to an inward uncertainty as to the trend of these observations.
"Well, Mr. Dale, there's lots of us that are ready to take up our share of the duties the Creator designed for us. We are standing waiting like the people in the parable that nobody had hired. The trouble is you won't let us, you men won't. We've got to wait for you to give us our rights. All our willingness doesn't amount to anything till you are ready."
A sudden harassing suspicion assailed the target of Susan's eloquence, and no sooner had it entered his mind than a dozen details instantly corroborated it. Joel remembered the look which had accompanied Susan's declaration that he would be an easy man to cook for. The love poems had in themselves been equivalent to an avowal of passion even without her tell-tale blushes. And now at last he grasped the underlying meaning of her vague hints and obscure figures of speech. For though she talked of rights and duties and the designs of the Creator, there could be no doubt that she meant a husband.
Joel rose to his feet and his mute tempestuous indignation was not without interest as throwing light on the workings of the masculine mind. In such a design as he attributed to Susan, it would seem that the lady had much to lose and little to gain. She was vigorous, well-preserved, possessed of a competence, while Joel was doubly bankrupt. Yet his mood was far removed from humble gratitude. He was furious at her presumption, alert to defend his threatened prerogatives, angry at Persis for exposing him to such an attack under his own roof where ignominious retreat was his only safety.
"I've just thought of a little matter I've got to look after this afternoon," he said, his manner nicely calculated to repel any tender advances. "I'll have to hurry along, and there won't be any occasion for you to linger. Please hang the key on the nail so Persis can let herself in when she comes."
His sudden hauteur was not lost on Susan. She sighed as he withdrew.
"Funny how real liberal-minded men won't listen to argument when it comes to some questions. But maybe he'll think over what I said and it'll have an influence sooner or later. Anyway, we've got to be prepared to sow beside all waters."
The leather-covered book, whose failure to serve her purpose was indirectly responsible for the broaching of so delicate a question, caught her wandering attention. She picked it up, reading the title aloud.
"Love Songs of Many Lands. No wonder I couldn't find one that was sensible. Well, I declare!"
The book had opened at the fly-leaf. "Persis from Justin," Susan read, bringing her near-sighted eyes close to the faded ink. She pursed her lips and shook her head in disapproving surprise.
"Persis Dale must have known some man pretty well to let him give her anything so pointed. I should have thought she'd have felt awfully embarrassed if she ever read the poems. Justin! Justin! There was a Justin Ware, but I never heard there was anything between them."
She returned the book to the chilly front room, adjusting it to the proper angle on the center-table, as if it had been a part of a geometrical diagram, And finally, after locking the door and hanging the key where Persis, or any other arrival, would immediately notice it, she turned her downcast face toward home.
"I'm afraid I hurt Mr. Dale's feelings. It beats all how sensitive some natures are. It's lucky I didn't get as far as what you would call the real telling arguments."
If Susan Fitzgerald's mood was despondent, as she reviewed the activities of the day, such was not the case with Persis Dale. In the Trotters' shabby cottage, exaltation reigned. Young Doctor Ballard, lean and boyish, looked ready to be congratulated on a good piece of work, though perfectly aware ha could never in this world, at least, collect his fee for medical attendance. Bartholomew's complacent self-importance almost straightened his bowed shoulders and redeemed the weakness of his sagging lips and feeble chin. Lizzie, his wife, spent and pallid, her gaunt temples hollowed and her face chiseled by suffering, smiled contentedly as she lay against her pillow, a creature lifted for the moment above the petty weaknesses, pitiable fruit of life-long and grinding poverty, by the gracious dignity of motherhood. As for Persis, as she carried the new arrival down-stairs to make the acquaintance of his brothers and sisters, her comely face was radiant. Weariness was forgotten. The hours of uncertainty, the long hours when Life and Death matched forces in that old duel renewed with each new existence, had all been forgotten. For a man was born.
The little Trotters gathered around in an ecstasy of pleasure and surprise. In a household where food was scanty, and every new pair of shoes was a serious economic problem, there was no lack of welcome for the newcomer. Chirpy little voices commented on the new brother's surprising pinkness, his diminutive proportions and his belligerent fashion of clenching his fists.
"He's got on the nice clean dress the angels made him," said Winnie, the observant. "See the lace in the sleeves."
"I wish the angels had made him some hair instead," suggested Wilbur, plainly aggrieved. "'Cause he could have worn some of our old clothes, but he can't wear our hair."
"He can have my jack-knife when he gets big enough," declared Benny, the oldest of the flock. He drew the cherished possession from his pocket as if ready to surrender it on the instant. And that offer was a signal for a general outburst of generosity.
"He can have my tooth brush."
"I'll give him my rubber boot. Maybe when he's big enough to wear it, somebody will give him one for the other leg."
"You're going to let the new baby have your high chair, ain't you, Essie?" Thus Winnie prompted the sister now compelled to relinquish the honors and dignities attaching to the post of baby of the family. And Essie, nodding her little tow head, laid a rose-leaf cheek against the crumpled carnation of the newcomer. "Nice litty brudder," she cooed. "Essie loves 'oo."
"My gracious me!" thought Persis Dale, as she tucked the baby into the battered cradle, never long without an occupant, "It's queer that we ain't shaking our heads and groaning over this. The Trotters can't afford a new baby any more than I can afford a steam yacht. There ain't enough of anything to go around, and yet we're all holding up our heads and acting as if this was the best day's work we ever had a hand in. It's no use talking. Down in our hearts we know that life's a good thing, even when we've got to take poverty and hardships along with it. And that's why we start in singing Psalms in spite of ourselves when a new baby comes."