II
It was after ten o’clock when Nathan reached his home. He had eaten with Caleb and then gone to the box-shop. Milly did not know of her husband’s freedom until he admitted himself into their cold front hall and opened the sitting-room door beyond.
“You!” she cried, springing up. “Have you broke jail, or—what?”
“Caleb Gridley came back from California this afternoon. He bailed me. You needn’t worry, Milly. It’s coming out all right.”
“You mean the shop’s goin’ to start again?”
“It’s too badly smashed for that. But they won’t blame me—I mean to hold me responsible for anything that father——”
“But the disgrace! Oh, my Gawd! Think o’ what this means to me!” The wife turned angrily. “And little Mary!” she snapped over her shoulder.
“I couldn’t help it, Milly. I didn’t know dad was going to loot the business.”
“Seems to me you oughta been smart enough to stop it—somehow. I used to think you was awful smart, once. But you certainly fooled me, Nat. You fooled me good.”
“Thanks!”
“Don’t give me none o’ your cheap lip!”
Nathan stood with hands clasped behind, face sadly downcast, looking at his wife’s back.
Milly was stouter than when she had worked in the box-shop. She had also coarsened. Her washed-out hair was gathered in a hasty knot at the back of her neck. “Scolding locks” stuck out at wild angles. The back of that neck was flat and homely. She wore a gingham house dress that was torn in the front and she could have materially improved her appearance by discarding her apron.
“Well,” she demanded, without looking around, “if the shop ain’t going to start up, what you aimin’ to do?”
“I haven’t thought that far yet. Get a job, probably. Go to work!”
“S’pose old Gridley would set you up in somethin’?”
“I wouldn’t ask him, even if he would.”
“But what about me, I say? What about Mary?”
“You won’t starve. I’ll see to that.”
“You’ll see to that! Huh! You couldn’t even see yourself out of jail! Gridley had to come clean from California and see it for you!”
“Milly, don’t let’s have any argument to-night. Please! I’m nearly all in.”
“So am I all in! You never give a thought about me!”
“Is there anything to eat in the house?” was Nat’s way of turning the edge of the altercation.
Milly shrugged her shoulders. Nathan went out into the cluttered, odorous kitchen and hunted around for food.
He found a stale frankfurter and a piece of soggy pie. He drew a glass of cold water and sat down to satisfy his hunger with the indigestible mess.
“Mary cut her finger this afternoon,” announced the wife. “I had to get Doc Johnson to see to it.” Milly, it had developed, was one of those persons who summon a doctor for every indisposition known to medicine from plain old-fashioned stomachache to falling off the roof and breaking a neck.
“I’ve got something else to think about now, Milly, besides Mary cutting her finger.”
“Yeah! I s’pose you have. You’re just like your father. A devil of a lot you care about your women folks!” Milly rammed the fire angrily and poked most of the live coals through into the ash-pan. “The fire’s out!” she snapped. “And there ain’t any wood.”
“But I gave you money to buy wood only last Friday.”
“Dad’s out o’ work. Nellie’d have to give up her pianner lessons if Ma didn’t have money from somewheres till dad’s took on again. I loaned it to her. Blood’s a little thicker in our family than it is in yours, Nat Forge!”
The food Nat had eaten failed to digest. He was tired and distraught and broken. But he kept his temper.
“Let’s go to bed and talk it over in the morning,” he begged. “I told you I’m nearly all in. Can’t you see it?”
“No, sir! You don’t go to bed, Nat Forge! Not till you’ve made this fire outta somethin’. You don’t catch me crawlin’ out into a cold house when Mary wakes up in the mornin’ and buildin’ no fire like your mother used ter. Not while you lie abed and enjoy yourself. Besides, it’s so cold to-night the pipes’ll freeze. Go down and smash up the piano box, if you can’t find anything else.”
Nathan lighted a lantern, went into the cellar and found kindling. When he had the fire negotiated, Milly was in bed with the little daughter,—a small bed in the side room.
Nathan had to go into another bedroom, where the hoarfrost was furry on the glass, and crawl between icy sheets alone.
He thought of many things that night, for sleep refused to come. Most of all he thought of Carol. He wondered what had become of her, where she was living and if she was happy. Then his thoughts turned to his father, and he wondered how easily Johnathan was resting that night, with his theft on his soul and the desertion of his family on his spirit. He thought of his mother up in the big ark on Vermont Avenue, crazed by the possibility that the court might wrest away her property by that iron process known as The Law. He thought of his sister, married to a French laborer, with a baby coming, up in Canada. He thought of Bernie Gridley and her father’s report of her satisfactory marriage to a Chicago millionaire. He thought, step by step, back to his boyhood and his days with me in Foxboro—happy, care-free days.
“Oh, God,” he whispered in the dark. “Why do things happen so? Where’s the reason behind it all—for there must be a reason? Do events and experiences come hit-or-miss—by chance—in this world? It can’t be!”
Nathan asked himself if he were doing right, living thus with Milly when he seemed to have nothing in common with her but their child,—when he did not love her? Marriage? What was marriage? Did it mean merely living in the same house with a woman, eating at the same table, sharing the same bed? Or did marriage mean something finer and higher and better than that, something which he had missed? Something which his father had caused him to miss. What was that Something? Where should he go to look for it? What must he do? He had to confess he did not know. He had no standards by which to judge, no training to help him. Even Caleb Gridley could not help him there. He remembered that Caleb had seemed vaguely relieved when the Duchess had passed on.
Out of the ruck of all the fellow’s bittersweet memories, his present perplexities, the foggy blur of the future, one fact stood preeminent, however.
He must go on. Somehow he must go on. Perhaps time would solve the problem, supply the great answer. But——
He must go on.