II
Anna Forge, as usual, had not found life any bed of roses. She had managed to retain the property on Vermont Avenue but at a disturbing price. For she discovered that whereas property was property and the house was appraised on the tax list at ten thousand dollars, yet even a ten-thousand-dollar house did not stand for the epitome of worldly wealth and affluence when there were no funds forthcoming to pay those taxes, keep up repairs, heat the place and give her the wherewithal to feel and clothe herself so she could reside therein. She had to sell the house and furnishings, retaining only enough of the latter to make two rooms livable in the top of the Norwalk block where she finally sat down in her loneliness and meditated darkly on the ingratitude of all flesh.
In July an alluring oil prospectus fell into her hands. Without consulting her son, fully expectant of realizing a fortune within three months—the prospectus inferred that she would—she gave up all but a few hundreds of dollars for some sheets of beautifully lithographed paper delivered by a well-dressed young man who had “a nice face.”
Edith in Montreal had presented her husband with triplets! The husband had seen no advantage in triplets, however, and had been inclined to act peevish. Anna sent Edith five hundred of the remaining nine hundred dollars “to help out dear daughter.” And dear daughter’s husband had commandeered the money, played a bucket shop and taken a better job down in Pennsylvania.
In September Anna Forge was reduced to seventy-nine dollars. Where the balance had gone the Lord only knew. Thereupon her thoughts turned to her better half who had “skun out and left her to starve” and she brought her troubles to Nathan, the idea being that Nathan should get the law after his father and have him brought back and made to support his wife.
But threescore wrathful stockholders and two national banks had also voted that Johnathan should be apprehended and brought back, quite a time before. The difficulty in both cases had been that neither knew exactly where to go to apprehend Johnathan and bring him back. So Johnathan had not been brought back and the matter languished.
By October, unbeknown to Milly, Nathan was mailing his mother a few dollars a week for her food and room rent. When he came in off the road he occasionally brought her new clothes. Mrs. Forge was grateful for the clothing but felt it would have been “nicer” in Nathan to give her the money and let her buy her clothes herself. But Nathan wanted the money to go for clothes.
She talked quite a lot about it, and not within the immediate family circle, either.