His Family Part 15

CHAPTER XIII

Deborah's recovery was rapid and determined. The next night she was sitting up and making light of her illness. On the third day she dismissed her nurse, and when her father came home from his office he found gathered about her bed not only her stenographer but both her a.s.sistant princ.i.p.als.

He frowned severely and went to his room, and a few minutes later he heard them leave. Presently she called to him, and he came to her bedside. She was lying back on the pillow with rather a guilty expression.

"Up to your old antics, eh?" he remarked.

"Exactly. It couldn't be helped, you see. It's the last week of our school year, and there are so many little things that have to be attended to. It's simply now or never."

"Humph!" was Roger's comment. "It's now or never with you," he thought. He went down to his dinner, and when he came back he found her exhausted. In the dim soft light of her room her face looked flushed and feverish, and vaguely he felt she was in a mood where she might listen to reason. He felt her hot dry hand on his. Her eyes were closed, she was smiling.

"Tell me the news from the mountains," she said. And he gave her the gossip of the farm in a letter he had had from George. It told of a picnic supper, the first one of the season. They had had it in the usual place, down by the dam on the river, "with a bonfire--a perfect peach--down by the big yellow rock--the one you call the Elephant." As Roger read the letter he could feel his daughter listening, vividly picturing to herself the great dark boulders by the creek, the shadowy firs, the stars above and the cool fresh tang of the mountain night.

"After this little sickness of yours--and that harum scarum wedding," he said, "I feel we're both ent.i.tled to a good long rest in mountain air."

"We'll have it, too," she murmured.

"With Edith's little youngsters. They're all the medicine you need." He paused for a moment, hesitating. But it was now or never. "The only trouble with you," he said, "is that you've let yourself be caught by the same disease which has its grip upon this whole infernal town. You're like everyone else, you're tackling about forty times what you can do. You're actually trying not only to teach but to bring 'em all up as your own, three thousand tenement children. And this is where it gets you."

Again he halted, frowning. What next?

"Go on, dear, please," said Deborah, in demure and even tones. "This is very interesting."

"Now then," he continued, "in this matter of your school. I wouldn't ask you to give it up, I've already seen too much of it. But so long as you've got it nicely started, why not give somebody else a chance? One of those a.s.sistants of yours, for example--capable young women, both. You could stand right behind 'em with help and advice--"

"Not yet," was Deborah's soft reply. She had turned her head on her pillow and was looking at him affectionately. "Why not?" he demanded.

"Because it's not nicely started at all. There's nothing brilliant about me, dear--I'm a plodder, feeling my way along. And what I have done in the last ten years is just coming to a stage at last where I can really see a chance to make it count for something. When I feel I've done that, say in five years more--"

"Those five years," said her father, "may cost you a very heavy price." As Deborah faced his troubled regard, her own grew quickly serious.

"I'd be willing to pay the price," she replied.

"But why?" he asked with impatience. "Why pay when you don't have to? Why not by taking one year off get strength for twenty years' work later on?

You'd be a different woman!"

"Yes, I think I should be. I'd never be the same again. You don't quite understand, you see. This work of mine with children--well, it's like Edith's having a baby. You have to do it while you're young."

"That works both ways," her father growled.

"What do you mean?" He hesitated:

"Don't you want any children of your own?"

Again she turned her eyes toward his, then closed them and lay perfectly still. "Now I've done it," he thought anxiously. She reached over and took his hand.

"Let's talk of our summer's vacation," she said.

A little while later she fell asleep.

Downstairs he soon grew restless and after a time he went out for a walk.

But he felt tired and oppressed, and as he had often done of late he entered a little "movie" nearby, where gradually the pictures, continually flashing out of the dark, drove the worries from his mind. For a half an hour they held his gaze. Then he fell into a doze. He was roused by a roar of laughter, and straightening up in his seat with a jerk he looked angrily around. Something broadly comic had been flashed upon the screen; and men and women and children, Italians, Jews and Irish, jammed in close about him, a dirty and perspiring ma.s.s, had burst into a terrific guffaw. Now they were suddenly tense again and watching the screen in absorbed suspense, while the crude pa.s.sions within themselves were played upon in the glamorous dark. And Roger scanned their faces--one moment smiling, all together, as though some G.o.d had pulled a string; then mawkish, sentimental, soft; then suddenly scowling, twitching, with long rows of animal eyes. But eager--eager all the time! Hungry people--yes, indeed!

Hungry for all the good things in the town, and for as many bad things, too! On one who tried to feed this mob there was no end to their demands!

What was one woman's life to them? Deborah's big family!

Edith came to the house one afternoon, and she was in Deborah's room when her father returned from his office. Her convalescence over at last, she was leaving for the mountains.

"Do learn your lesson, Deborah dear," she urged upon her sister. "Let Sarah pack your trunk at once and come up with me on Sat.u.r.day night."

"I can't get off for two weeks yet."

"Why can't you?" Edith demanded. And when Deborah spoke of fresh air camps and baby farms and other work, Edith's impatience only grew. "You'll have to leave it to somebody else! You're simply in no condition!" she cried.

"Impossible," said Deborah. Edith gave a quick sigh of exasperation.

"Isn't it enough," she asked, "to have worked your nerves to a frazzle already? Why can't you be sensible? You've got to think of yourself a little!"

"You'd like me to marry, wouldn't you, dear?" her sister put in wearily.

"Yes, I should, while there is still time! Just now you look far from it!

It's exactly as Allan was saying! If you keep on as you're going you'll be an old woman at thirty-five!"

"Thank you!" said Deborah sharply. Two spots of color leaped in her checks.

"You'd better leave me, Edith! I'll come up to the mountains as soon as I can! And I'll try not to look any more like a hag than I have to!

Good-night!"

Roger followed Edith out of the room.

"That last shot of mine struck home," she declared to him in triumph.

"I wouldn't have done it," her father said. "I gave you that remark of Baird's in strict confidence, Edith--"

"Now father," was her good-humored retort, "suppose you leave this matter to me. I know just what I'm doing."

"Well," he reflected uneasily, after she had left him, "here's more trouble in the family. If Edith isn't careful she'll make a fine mess of this whole affair."

After dinner he went up to Deborah's room, but through the open doorway he caught a glimpse of his daughter which made him instinctively draw back.

Sitting bolt upright in her bed, sternly she was eyeing herself in a small mirror in her hand. Her father chuckled noiselessly. A moment later, when he went in, the gla.s.s had disappeared from view. Soon afterwards Baird himself arrived, and as they heard him coming upstairs Roger saw his daughter frown, but she continued talking.

"h.e.l.lo, Allan," she said with indifference. "I'm feeling much better this evening."

"Are you? Good," he answered, and he started to pull up an easy chair. "I was hoping I could stay awhile--I've been having one of those long mean days--"

"I'd a little rather you wouldn't," Deborah put in softly. Allan turned to her in surprise. "I didn't sleep last night," she murmured, "and I feel so drowsy." There was a little silence. "And I really don't think there's any need of your dropping in to-morrow," she added. "I'm so much better--honestly."

Baird looked at her a moment.