Within these walls

by Rupert Hughes

She was passionately domestic for the first time and when she offered as a final inducement to take her father and mother to town with her, RoBards could not deny her the toil or himself the repose. He wanted a few days of communion with the ideal he was resigning. He wanted to compose his soul anew for the new city life, the country good-by.

The children, Immy and Keith, made a great to-do about their mother’s knees, clinging to her and begging her not to go. And the babe-in-arms, the miniature David, howled in trio, vaguely understanding that something ominous was afoot. Patty was the center of the battle. She held the infant under one arm while with her free hand she tried to clasp both Immy and Keith. Her voice was soft among the clamors, and she promised them everything if they would only be good for a few days while she made the home ready in the great city.

She looked up at her husband and he could see the weird pride in her eyes. She, the frail, the pretty, the soulful, had been as an apple-branch that bore these buds to flower and fruit from within herself somehow. And they hated to let go, as perhaps the apple is reluctant to be tossed into space by the wind that rends the twig.

RoBards had noted this cohesion in trees that were hard to fell and split. Some woods would almost welcome the teeth of the saw and the keen edge of the ax; they divided at a tap. But other trees fought the blade, twisted it and flung it off and made a strange noise of distress. And when the ax fell upon them they turned it aside, caught it in withes of fiber and tore it from the helve.

Families were like that: some broke apart at the first shock; others clung together as if they were all interlaced, soul and sinew. He hoped that his household would be of this infrangibility.

Patty diverted the children from their grief by loading them with tasks and warnings; the first was to take good care of Papa; the rest were to take care of themselves amid the infinite risks that make a jungle about children.

She murmured to her husband: “Watch out for those Lasher children. That boy Jud has grown to a big hulking brute. He hangs about the place—wants to steal something. I suppose. Drive him off if you see him. And don’t let the children play with the Lashers. They come by in the road, and they’re—not nice at all.”

She made the children promise to abstain from friendship with the Lashers and from numberless other adventures; and at last she broke from them and hurried to the carry-all. Cuff and Teen had gone ahead in the wagon with the luggage. RoBards helped Patty and the baby to the front seat and took his place beside her. Her father and mother were already bestowed in the back of the carriage. RoBards drove away, calling to the children that he would soon be home.

He and Patty had little to say of either their secret prides or shames; old age had its eyes upon their shoulder blades, and was perhaps subtly understanding from the glum wisdom of experience that this young couple was gathering also much cargo that could never be thrown overboard and must always be hidden away in the deepest hold.

The length of the journey to New York was wonderfully shortened now. RoBards put Patty and her parents and the servants on the stage and she had only to ride as far as Harlem, where she would take the New York and Harlem Railroad train. It had a steam engine and a double track clear to City Hall, and some day it was going to be extended to White Plains, and eventually perhaps to Chatham.