His Family - Ernest Poole [69]
But later, as the weeks wore on, she began to plan for her children. She planned precisely how to fit them all into the house in town, she planned the hours for their meals, for their going alone or with the nurse or a maid to their different private schools, to music lessons, to dancing school and uptown to the park to play. She planned their fall clothes and she planned their friends. And there came to her father occasional moods of anxiety. He remembered Bruce's grim remarks about those "simple" schools and clothes, the kind that always cost the most. And he began to realize what Bruce's existence must have been. For scarcely ever in their talks did Edith speak of anything outside of her family. Night after night, with a tensity born of her struggle with her grief, she talked about her children. And Roger was in Bruce's place, he was the one she planned with. At moments with a vague dismay he glimpsed the life ahead in his home.
George was hard at work each day down by the broken dam at the mill. He had an idea he could patch it up, put the old water-wheel back into place and make it run a dynamo, by which he could light the house and barn and run the machines in the dairy. In his new rôle as the man of his family, George was planning out his career. He was wrestling with a book entitled "Our New Mother Earth" and a journal called "The Modern Farm." And to Roger he confided that he meant to be a farmer. He wanted to go in the autumn to the State Agricultural College. But when one day, very cautiously, Roger spoke to Edith of this, with a hard and jealous smile which quite transformed her features, she said,
"Oh, I know all about that, father dear. It's just a stage he's going through. And it's the same way with Elizabeth, too, and her crazy idea of becoming a doctor. She took that from Allan Baird, and George took his from Deborah! They'll get over it soon enough--"
"They won't get over it!" Roger cried. "Their dreams are parts of something new! Something I'm quite vague about--but some of it has come to stay! You're losing all your chances--just as I did years ago! You'll never know your children!"
But he uttered this cry to himself alone. Outwardly he only frowned. And Edith had gone on to say,
"I do hope that Deborah won't come up this summer. She's been very good and kind, of course, and if she comes she'll be doing it entirely on my account. But I don't want her here--I want her to marry, the sooner the better, and come to her senses--be happy, I mean. And I wish you would tell her so."
Within a few days after this Deborah wrote to her father that she was coming the next week. He said nothing to Edith about it at first, he had William saddled and went for a ride to try to determine what he should do. But it was a ticklish business. For women were queer and touchy, and once more he felt the working of those uncanny family ties.
"Deborah," he reflected, "is coming up here because she feels it's selfish of her to stay away. If she marries at once, as she told me herself, she thinks Edith will be hurt. Edith won't be hurt--and if Deborah comes, there'll be trouble every minute she stays. But can I tell her so? Not at all. I can't say, 'You're not wanted here.' If I do, _she'll_ be hurt. Oh Lord, these girls! And Deborah knows very well that if she does get married this month, with Laura abroad and Edith up here and only me at the wedding, Edith will smile to herself and say, 'Now isn't that just like Deborah?'"
As Roger slowly rode along a steep and winding mountain road, gloomily he reflected to what petty little troubles