The Innocents Part 16

Mother, she who had faced a sheriff's shot-gun, was timorous about facing an irate matron, and she tagged hesitatingly after Father as he marched along the row of bungalows, up the steps of the one that was rented, and rang the bell.

The door was opened by a maid, in a Lipsittsville version of a uniform.

"Lady or gent o' the house in?" asked Father, airily sticking his new derby on one side of his head and thrusting a thumb in an armhole, very impudent and fresh and youthful.

"No, sir," said the maid, stupidly.

Mother sighed. To tell the truth, she had wanted to see the promised land of this bungalow.

"Well, say, girl, Mrs. Appleby and I are thinking of renting one of these here bungalonies, like the fellow says, and I wonder if we could take a look at this house, to see how it looks furnished?"

The maid stared dumbly at him, looked suspiciously at Mother. Apparently she decided that, though the flamboyant Father was likely to steal everything in the house, Mother was a person to be trusted, and she mumbled, "Ya.s.s, I ga.s.s so."

Father led the way in, and Mother stumbled over every possible obstacle, so absorbed was she by the intimate pleasantness which furniture gave to this big living-room--as large as the whole of their flat in New York.

Actually, the furniture wasn't impressive--just a few good willow chairs, a big couch, a solid table. There were only two or three pictures, one rug, and, in the built-in shelves, no books at all. But it had s.p.a.ce and cheerfulness; it was a home.

"Here's the dining-room, with butler's pantry, and that door on the right looks like it might be a bedroom," Father announced, after a hasty exploration, while the maid stared doubtfully. He went on, half whispering, "Let's peep into the bedroom."

"No, no, we mustn't do that," Mother insisted, but regretfully. For she was already wondering where, if she were running things, she would put a sewing-machine. She had always agreed with Matilda Tubbs that sewing-machines belonged in bedrooms.

While the maid shadowed him and Mother opened her mouth to rebuke him, Father boldly pushed open the door on the right. He had guessed correctly. It was a bedroom. Mother haughtily stayed in the center of the living-room, but she couldn't help glancing through the open door, and she sighed enviously as she saw the splendor of twin beds, with a little table and an electric light between them, and the open door of a tiled bathroom. It was too much that the mistress of the house should have left her canary-yellow silk sweater on the foot of one bed. Mother had wanted a silk sweater ever since she had beheld one flaunted on Cape Cod.

Father darted out, seized her wrists, dragged her into the bedroom, and while she was exploding in the lecture he so richly deserved she stopped, transfixed. Father was pointing to a picture over one bed, and smiling strangely.

The picture was an oldish one, in a blackened old frame. It showed a baby playing with kittens.

"Why!" gasped Mother--"why--why, it's just like the picture--it _is_ the picture--that we got when Lulu was born--that we had to leave on the Cape."

"Yump," said Father. He still smiled strangely. He pointed at the table between the twin beds. On the table was a little brown, dusty book.

Mother gazed at it dazedly. Her step was feeble as she tottered between the beds, picked up the book, opened it. It was the New Testament which she had had since girlhood, which she had carried all through their hike, which she supposed to be in their rooms back at the Star Hotel.

There was a giggle from the doorway, and the apparently stupid maid was there, bowing.

"Lena, has our trunk come from the hotel?" Father asked.

"Yessir, I just been sneaking it in the back way. Welcome home, mum,"

said the maid, and shut the door--from the other side.

Mother suddenly crumpled, burrowed her head against Father's shoulder and sobbed: "This is ours? Our own? Now?"

"Yes, Mother, it sure am ours." Father still tried to speak airily, but in his voice were pa.s.sion and a grave happiness. "It's ours--_yours_!

And every stick of the furniture more than half paid for already! I didn't tell you how well we're doing at the store. Say, golly, I sure did have a time training Lena to play the game, like she didn't know us. She thought I was plumb nutty, at first!"

"And I have a maid, too!" marveled Mother.

"Yes, and a garden if you want to keep busy outdoors. And a phonograph with nineteen records, musical and comic, by Jiminy!"

To prove which he darted back into the living-room, started "Molly Magee, My Girl," and to its cheerful strains he danced a fantastic jig, while the maid stared from the dining-room, and Mother, at the bedroom door, wept undisguisedly, murmuring, "Oh, my boy, my boy, that planned it all to surprise me!"

CHAPTER XVIII

Mother had, after an energetic September, succeeded in putting all the furniture to rights and in evoking curtains and linen. Anybody, even the impractical Father, can fill a house with furniture, but it takes two women and at least four weeks to make the furniture look as though it had grown there. She had roamed the fields, and brought home golden-rod and Michaelmas daisies and maple leaves. She no longer panted or felt dizzy when she ran up the stairs. She was a far younger woman than the discreet brown hermit of the dusty New York flat, just as the new Father, who had responsibility and affairs, was younger than the Pilkings clerk of old.

Always she watched for Father's home-coming. He usually came prancing home so happily that, one evening, when Mother saw him slowly plod down the street, his head low, his hands sagging his pockets, she ran out to the porch and greeted him with a despairing, "What is it, Seth?"

"Oh, nothing much." Before he would go on, Father put his arm about her ample waist and led her to the new porch-swing overlooking the raw spaded patch of earth that would be a rose-garden some day--that already, to their imaginations, was brilliant with blossoms and alive with birds.

She observed him mutely, anxiously. He handed a letter to her. It was in their daughter's handwriting:

DEAR PAPA AND MAMA:

I don't know if this letter will reach you, but have been reading pieces in Saserkopee & N. Y. papers about your goings-on and hear you are at a town called Lipsittsville, oh how could you run away from the beautiful home Harris & I gave you, I am sure if there was anything we didn't do for y'r comfort & happiness you had only to ask & here you go and make us a laughing stock in Saserkopee, we had told everyone you would be at our party & suddenly you up & disappear & it has taken us months to get in touch with you, such a wicked, untruthful lie about friend sick in Boston & all. Harris heard from a traveling salesman, & he agreed with Harris how thoughtless and wilful you are, & he told Harris that you are at this place Lipsittsville, so I will address you there & try & see if letter reaches you & tell you that though you must be ashamed of your conduct by now, we are willing to forgive & forget, I was never one to hold a grudge. I am sure if you had just stopped and thought you would have realized to what worry and inconvenience you have put us, & if this does reach you, by now I guess you will have had enough of being b.u.ms or pedestrians or whatever fancy name you call yourself, and be glad to come back to a good home and see if you can't show a little sense as you ought to at your time of life, & just think of what the effect must be on Harry when his very own grand-parents acts this way! If you will telegraph me, or write me if you have not got enough money for telegraphing, Harris will come for you, & we will see what can be done for you. We think and hope that a place can be found for you in the Cyrus K. Ginn Old People's Home, where you can spend your last days, I guess this time you will want to behave yourselves, and Harris & I will be glad to have you at our home from time to time. After all my love & thoughtfulness for you--but I guess I need not say anything more, by this time you will have learned your lesson.

Your loving daughter, LULU.

Father and Mother had sat proudly on their porch the night before, and they had greeted pa.s.sers-by chattily, like people of substance, people healthy and happy and responsible. Now they shrank on the swing; they saw nothing but Lulu's determined disdain for their youthful naughtiness; heard nothing but her voice, hard, unceasing, commenting, complaining; and the obese and humorless humor of Mr. Harris Hartwig.

"She can't make us go back--confine us in this here home for old folks, can she, legally?" It was Mother who turned to Father for rea.s.surance.

"No, no. Certainly not.... I don't _think_ so." They sat still. They seemed old again.

Just before dinner he started up from the swing, craftily laid his finger beside his nose, and whispered something very exciting and mysterious to Mother, who kept saying: "Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Yes, I'd be willing to. Though it would be hard." Immediately after dinner they walked sedately down the village street, while blackbirds whistled from the pond and children sang ancient chants of play under the arc-lights at corners, and neighbors cried "'Evenin'" to them, from chairs on porches. They called upon the town newspaperman, old Lyman Ford, and there was a conference with much laughter and pounding of knees--also a pitcher of lemonade conjointly prepared by Mrs. S. Appleby and Mrs. L.

Ford. Finally the Applebys paraded to the telegraph-office, and to Mr.

Harris Hartwig, at Saserkopee, they sent this message:

Come see us when can. Wire at once what day and train. Will meet.

A sodden and pathetic figure, in his notorious blue-flannel shirt, and the suit, or the unsuit, which he had worn into Lipsittsville in the days when he had been a hobo, Father waited for the evening train and for Mr. Harris Hartwig.

Mr. Hartwig descended the car steps like a general entering a conquered province. Father nervously concealed his greasy shirt-front with his left hand, and held out his right hand deprecatingly. Mr. Hartwig took it into his strong, virile, but slightly damp, clasp, and held it (a thing which Father devoutly hated) while he gazed magnanimously into Father's shy eyes and, in a confidential growl which could scarce have been heard farther away than Indianapolis, condescended: "Well, here we are. I'm glad there's an end to all this wickedness and foolishness at last. Where's Mother Appleby?"

"She wasn't feeling jus' like coming," Father mumbled. "I'll take you to her."

"How the devil are you earning a living?"

"Why, the gent that owns the biggest shoe-store here was so kind as to give me sort of work round the store like."

"Yuh, as porter, I'll venture! You might just as well be sensible, for once in your life, Father, and learn that you're past the age where you can insist and demand and get any kind of work, or any kind of a place to live in, that just suits your own sweet-fancy. Business ain't charity, you know, and all these working people that think a business is run just to suit _them_--! And that's why you ought to have been more appreciative of all Lulu did for you--and then running away and bringing her just about to the verge of nervous prostration worrying over you!"

They had left the station, now, and were pa.s.sing along Maple Avenue, with its glory of trees and shining lawns, the new Presbyterian church and the Carnegie Library. Mr. Hartwig of Saserkopee was getting far too much satisfaction out of his role as sage and counselor to notice Maple Avenue. He never had the chance to play that role when the wife of his bosom was about.

"Another thing," Mr. Hartwig was booming, as they approached the row of bungalows where the Applebys lived, "you ought to have understood the hardship you were bringing on Mother by taking her away from our care--and you always pretending to be so fond of her and all. I don't want to rub it in or nothing, but I always did say that I was suspicious of these fellows that are always petting and stewing over their wives in public--you can be dead sure that in private they ain't got any more real consideration 'n' thoughtfulness for 'em than--than anything. And you can see for yourself now-- Here you are. Why, just one look at you is enough to show you're a failure! Why, my garbage-man wears a better-looking suit than that!"

Though Father felt an acute desire to climb upon a convenient carriage-block and punch the n.o.ble Roman head of Mr. Harris Hartwig, he kept silent and looked as meek as he could and encouraged his dear son-in-law to go on.