His Family - Ernest Poole [24]
"Do you approve of that?" she rejoined. "When I was engaged, I made Bruce go to you before I even let him--" here Edith broke off primly. "Of course that was some time ago. An engagement, Laura tells me, is 'a mere experiment' nowadays. They 'experiment' till they feel quite sure--then notify their parents and get married in a week."
"She is rushing it, I admit," Roger soothingly replied. "But she has her mind set on Paris in June."
"Paris in June," said Edith, "sums up in three words Laura's whole conception of marriage. You really ought to talk to her, father. It's your duty, it seems to me."
"What do you mean?"
"I'd rather not tell you." Edith's glance went sternly to the cradle by her bed. "Laura pities me," she said, "for having had five children."
"Oh, now, my dear girl!"
"She does, though--she said as much. When she dropped in the other day and I tried to be sympathetic and give her a little sound advice, she said I had had the wedding I liked and the kind of married life I liked, and she was going to have hers. And she made it quite plain that her kind is to include no children. It's to be simply an effort to find by 'experiment' whether or not she loves Hal Sloane. If she doesn't--" Edith gave a slight but emphatic wave of dismissal.
"Do you mean to say Laura told you that?" her father asked with an angry frown.
"I mean she made me feel it--as plainly as I'm telling it! What I can't understand," his daughter went on, "is Deborah's attitude in the affair."
"What's the matter with Deborah?" inquired Roger dismally.
"Oh, nothing's the matter with Deborah. She's quite self-sufficient. She at least can play with modern ideas and keep her head while she's doing it. But when poor Laura--a mere child with the mind of a chicken--catches vaguely at such ideas, applies them to her own little self and risks her whole future happiness, it seems to me perfectly criminal for Deborah not to interfere! Not even a word of warning!"
"Deborah believes," said her father, "in everyone's leading his own life."
"That's rot," was Edith's curt reply. "Do I lead my own life? Does Bruce? Do you?"
"No," growled Roger feelingly.
"Do my children?" Edith demanded. "I know Deborah would like them to. That's her latest and most modern fad, to run a school where every child shall sit with a rat in its lap or a goat, and do just what he pleases--follow his natural bent, she says. I hope she won't come up to the mountains and practice on my children. I should hate to break with Deborah," Edith ended thoughtfully.
Roger rose and walked the room. The comforting idea entered his mind that when the wedding was over he would take out his collection of rings and carefully polish every one. But even this hope did not stay with him long.
"With Laura at home," he heard Edith continue, "you at least had a daughter to run your house. If Deborah tries to move you out--"
"She won't!" cried Roger in alarm.
"If she does," persisted Edith, "or if she begins any talk of the kind--you come to me and _I'll_ talk to her!"
Her father walked in silence, his head down, frowning at the floor.
"It seems funny," Edith continued, "that women like me who give children their lives, and men like Bruce who are building New York--actually doing it all the time--have so little to say in these modern ideas. I suppose it's because we're a little too real."
"To come back to the wedding," Roger suggested.
"To come back to the wedding, father dear," his daughter said compassionately. "I'm afraid it's going to be a 'mere form' which will make you rather wretched. When you get so you can't endure it, come in and see me and the baby."
As he started for home, her words of warning recurred to his mind. Yes, here was the thing that disturbed him most, the ghost lurking under all this confusion, the part which had to do with himself. It was bad enough to know that his daughter, his own flesh and blood, was about to settle her fate at