Bobbie, General Manager: A Novel

by Olive Higgins Prouty

"O Will," I said tearfully when he kissed me, "I've quarrelled with Edith and Alec. And, oh, dear, it was the last thing in the world I meant to do."

"Tell me about it," he said and laid aside his big book. I took its place on the arm of his chair, and told him my story. After he had rung up Edith's doctor by telephone and found that there wasn't cause for alarm, he came back to me and called me "young wildcat" which sweet words were music to my ears. I knew at the sound of them that Will didn't consider the quarrel serious. "It will all blow over in a week. You see!" he laughed, and I went to sleep comforted.

But it didn't blow over. That fateful visit of mine marked the beginning of an understood family war. Clouds of trouble grew thicker instead of blowing away. The very next evening I received a brief note from Alec asking that I postpone any more visits to Hilton until after Edith's illness. Ruth wrote she couldn't understand me in the least; she thought it was dreadful that Madge was going to have a child anyway, but if she got Father's three thousand dollars it would be the unjustest thing that ever happened! Tom—even fair-minded Tom from out West—told me to remember that Oliver's marriage had been rather out-of-order, and asked me if I was championing a cause I could call worthy. When Ruth ran across me one day in town a fortnight later she treated me like a bare acquaintance. Alec went so far as to cancel a Saturday golf engagement with Will. Long distance telephone calls between our houses came to an abrupt end. Malcolm from New York bluntly referred to the "family row."

I didn't tell Madge about the trouble brewing in our family. I never even imparted to her the knowledge of the premium to be paid for the first Vars grandson. Silently I sat with her sewing by the hour on her meagre little outfit of five nainsook slips, three flannel Gertrudes, two bands, two shirts, and three flannellette night-gowns, with never a word of my eager thoughts. I became very loyal to the cause I had chosen to defend. It didn't trouble me that our little baby-clothes were so much plainer than Edith's, for night and day, day and night, I was hoping against hope, wishing against chance, willing and frantically demanding that Madge's splendour might lie in her victory.

You can imagine the ecstatic state of excitement I was thrown into when the news of the arrival of Edith's nine-pound daughter reached me some six weeks after my last visit to Hilton.

I must have felt a good deal like the supporters of a weaker foot-ball team when their side makes the first touchdown. I could have thrown up my hat with joy; I could have shouted myself hoarse. Madge had an opportunity! Madge had a chance! It seemed too good to be true, and I longed to share with Madge the triumph so nearly hers. But Will was afraid she might worry and fret about it,—there was, of course, the possibility of disappointment,—so I followed his advice and kept on building my air-castles in secret.

It was on November twenty-first that Madge's little child was born. We had written to Oliver in June and he had started on his homeward journey as soon as Madge's belated letter reached him, some time in August. He had tramped a hundred miles down a tropical river, had lain sick for five weeks with a fever in a native camp, had dragged himself in a weakened condition twenty miles farther on to the coast, and finally had caught a slow-travelling freight-boat bound for Spain. Blown out of its course, becalmed, disabled by a terrific storm, Oliver never saw the coast of Europe until well into November. His mite of a child was two weeks old before he reached home.

Oliver had done well down there in South America. Reports of his ability had reached the Boston office months before Oliver himself appeared. It seems that Oliver's chief had written a long letter telling all about the ingenuity which young Vars had shown in working out some technical problem connected with a suspension bridge down there. I told you Oliver's line was civil engineering. The Boston office informed Will they had offered Vars a good position right here at home with a salary that he could live on. I was delighted, and as soon as we learned that he had started for God's country, I began to hunt up apartments.

I wanted Oliver to see for himself and by himself what a perfect little housekeeper—what a lovely little creature, simple as she was, he had chanced to pick out up there in the mountains of Vermont. I honestly began to fear Oliver wouldn't appreciate half of the delicate points that Madge had developed. I wished I could give my brother a course of training too. He is the kind to be rather impolite inside the walls of his own domain. I selected for Madge and Oliver a suburb where the rents were not high, about half an hour by trolley from Boston. I planned to have Madge well established in her own five sunny little rooms before the arrival of either her husband or child. From my safe-full of silver and attic-full of Will's furniture, which I couldn't use, I could easily have set up two brides at housekeeping. I sent over a whole load of things from our house to Madge's and we spent days afterward settling the darling little rooms. On November twenty-first I went over to the apartment alone. Madge had complained of not feeling very well and I didn't want her to get all tired out before she actually moved the following week. The kitchen utensils were waiting to be washed and set in rows on the cupboard shelves, so I started out straight after breakfast and spent the whole day "playing house" there alone. I didn't get back until after seven o'clock at night. Will must have been watching for me, for he met me at the door. The instant I entered the house I knew something unexpected had happened. There was a white pillow on the couch in the living-room. I smelled ether.