IV
Nathan slunk like a felon through the back streets to reach his home. He knew the town was talking about his poem. He was shy of praise and criticism hurt him. Not because it was criticism but because it usually rested on some one’s disapproval. The last thought in his head was any back fire at home from the verses. Consequently he was puzzled when on reaching the Spring Street corner he saw his sister arise from the steps and hurry toward him.
“Natie!” she cried. “Don’t go in! Run and hide!”
“Hide! What for?”
“Dad’s whopping mad over what you had in the paper to-night. He’s laying for you good.”
“Laying for me?”
“He thinks you’ve slammed him somehow, for the fights he has with Ma. And I guess the minister didn’t like it either and jawed him about it in prayer meeting. Anyway, Pa came in as white as a ghost. He asked for you. When Ma said you was still out, he took off his things and started pulling down all the curtains. He shoved back the furniture and went and got the strap. Ma wanted to know what was eating him, and he said when you came in he was going to give you the darnedest dressing down you’d ever got in your life.”
Nathan sank down on the low cement wall which ran around the Granger lawn.
“And how did Ma take it?”
“Oh, she stood up for you. Not because she’d read the poetry or cared a hoot what you’d said in it. Just because it was something to fight about with Pa. They were going it hot and heavy when I decided to sit out on the steps and warn you. I’ve got to go back before they miss me, so, listen! You hang around outside, Natie, and if Ma talks him out of it or he gets winded and goes to bed, I’ll put a lamp in my upstairs window and you’ll know it’s a sign to sneak in.”
Nathan remained seated on the fence. Once or twice he cast glances toward his home, fearing to go in, fearing to remain out later. He looked down at his shoes, worn, sloppy and unshined. He felt supinely small in the ludicrous suit he wore, an old one of his father’s. His hands were soiled. His finger nails were broken. He needed a bath, in fact, it seemed as though he always needed a bath. He felt grimy and seamy and prematurely old.
He had been that evening in the Seaver home. Fred Seaver’s father ran a meat and grocery store in East Main Street. Fred was experimenting with electricity and Nat had gone over to inspect his apparatus. But it had not been the apparatus which had most interested Nathan. It had been the Seaver home.
The Seaver home had hardwood floors and all the rooms were lighted by electric chandeliers. The dining room had a cozy “dome” above the table, and silver sparkled amid cut glass on the buffet. The Seaver parlor wasn’t “saved for company.” It was open all the time and in one corner an open fire burned cheerily. The Seavers called it the “living room.” There were bookshelves between the windows and a soft-shaded reading lamp on the center table.
In the Forge home, Johnathan “roared like a bull” if more than one gas light was burned at once. Out from the west wall of the Forge kitchen stuck a twelve-inch gas bracket with a single Welsbach burner. It was a white, cheerless light which burned unevenly. Beneath it each night Johnathan tipped back his plain wooden chair and read his Telegraph. If the rest of the family cared to read, they “strained their eyes” or waited until the father had finished. Nathan could not help comparing the two lamps,—the difference in homes which they represented.
The Seaver home was inviting, restful. In the Forge home, clothes were always piled on chairs or tables. More ironed clothes were usually strung on a wire from corner to corner, making the kitchen atmosphere stuffy. The sink was always filled with greasy dishes. The faucet dripped. There were crumbs on the red tablecloth and sugar grains on the worn linoleum.
Nathan had compared the two and wished, poor boy, that he might know such a home as Fred Seaver’s. He thought of it now as he sat out in the chill September night, afraid to enter a house where a father waited to flog him.
Of one thing the boy was grimly resolved. At exactly the moment the law allowed him his freedom, he would find a girl somewhere and have a home that should exhibit some claim toward beauty, cheerfulness and peace. Who the girl might be was immaterial. To flee the horrible, fear-driven, Scripture-surfeited place he had known from earliest boyhood was becoming the greatest objective in existence. But meanwhile, what should he do?
The question answered itself. The front door of his father’s house opened and Johnathan himself emerged. He wore hat and coat. Down the steps he started and in the opposite direction from where Nathan waited. Before the boy could solve the mystery, his sister appeared. She ran frantically for the place where she had left her brother.
“Natie!” she cried hysterically. “Natie—come quick! Something’s happened to Ma!”
Across the street Nathan leaped and into the dark hallway. He bumped into a door, stumbled over a chair, reached the kitchen.
His mother was seated on the floor, hammering her gnarled fists crazily upon the linoleum. One of her legs stuck out, uncovered, from beneath her body. Her spectacles were off, her face was swollen—as it usually was swollen—with weeping.
“She’s having one of her spells!” cried the awe-struck sister. “You’ll have to put her to bed—or do something!” The girl spoke as though they were gazing down on a strange biological exhibit.
Mrs. Forge was only letting her nerves go in an enjoyable fit of hysterics. But it was an epochal fit of hysterics. She pounded the floor and she kicked her heels. She tore down her hair and ripped her washed-out blue wrapper from her thin shoulders, leaving soiled underclothes and rusty, broken corsets exposed.
“I’ll kill myself!” she shrieked. “I will! I will! I’ll not stand it another day! I’ll kill myself!” She emphasized each “will” with a thump of her tightly clenched fist upon the floor.
“Doctor Johnson told Pa once the quickest way to bring folks out of a ‘spell’ was to throw cold water on ’em!” suggested Edith. “You better get the bucket, Nat. Give her a sloppin’—a good one!”
But Nat could not “give her a sloppin’.” He was suddenly overwhelmed with pity.
“Come, mother,” he said. “Let me help you to bed!”
“I don’t want to go to bed! I want to kill myself! And I will! I will! I will! Get me the butcher knife! Edith!—Nathan! Get the butcher knife! Watch your mother kill herself.”
Edith started to cry. Nathan saw something should be done and he did it. He stooped and picked up his mother. Though she fought and clawed his face, he managed it. Bidding Edith go ahead with the lamp, he carried his struggling mother up the stairs and into her chamber. There he laid her on the bed.
“Undress her, Edie,” he ordered. “Get her into bed before Pa comes back.”
“I dassent, Nat. I’m afraid.”
Nathan locked his mother into the bedroom, first making certain there was nothing about the chamber with which she could “do anything rash.” Then he went back down the stairs.
He was inclined to agree with an oft-expressed sentiment of his father’s. It was a “hell of a home.”
“Where you going, Natie?” cried Edith. “Don’t leave me alone with her. I’m afraid, I say.”
“She can’t get out, unless she jumps through a window, and I don’t aim to be here when Pa comes back.”
“Where you going?”
“I dunno. Just out.”
Nathan started for the hallway. But he got no farther. He met his father—coming in.
Johnathan made an arresting gesture.
“Young man,” he announced hoarsely, “I want to see you.”
The boy was startled by the strange quality of Johnathan’s voice. The father’s face was white and drawn. There were puffy circles beneath his eyes and almost no color in his lips.
“Whatter you want?” demanded the boy sullenly.
“It’s time that you and I had a talk, young fellow. You’re approaching man’s estate. It’s time that you and I had a talk.”