Part 3

It was Theodore Roosevelt’s favorite march, over the yard and out through the fences to the old barn that he had sentimentally left standing when he built Sagamore Hill because, he told himself, it had such a nice big haymow. When he had pushed forward with his men at San Juan Hill, struggling through thorny brush where poisonous snakes lurked, slipping and sliding over the matted vegetation, he had had the same feeling of leading a troop of trusting souls as he had now, propping the heavy barn door open till the last straggler panted through.

“I speak to play cowboy,” shouted Ted.

“You need outdoors for cowboys,” Alice objected, “and horses!”

“Can’t we have the pony out, Father?” Ted begged. “Grant hasn’t had any exercise today.”

“No, I promised Mother we’d play inside. It’s fairly warm in here. Who’ll be first up the ladder?”

“Me!” shrilled adventurous Ethel. “But we can’t climb with these overshoes on. They’re too slippery.”

“Stack them all here neatly. And nobody is to turn and jump back down that ladder,” their father ordered.

“She did one day,” declared Kermit, “she landed right on my stomach.”

“You had your stomach in the way of my feet.” Ethel flashed quickly up the ladder. The others came after, Theodore taking the rear to help Archie, who had to be lifted up the last steps. The mow above was high and lighted by a dusty window. The roof had chinks here and there between the aged shingles, letting in pale beams of light that showed the ragged mounds of hay with a pitchfork sticking up out of one stack.

Ted promptly seized this and began waving it, shouting, “I’m a Rough Rider. I choose Father with me. The rest of you can be Spaniards.”

Theodore recovered the menacing weapon firmly and stood it in a far corner. “No Rough Rider fought with a pitchfork. I’ll be the Spaniards. The rest of you can attack from those stacks over there. Remember we beat the Spaniards!”

There was a great deal of yelling “Bang! Bang!” and when the hay was pretty well flattened and the children swarming over him Roosevelt obligingly lay flat pretending to gasp and moan from a lethal wound. His acting was so realistic that Ethel began to cry.

“I don’t like being Spaniards,” she wailed. “I don’t want to hurt Father.”

He sat up, reaching for her. “I’m not hurt,” he comforted, “just slightly out of breath. That hay is dusty. Now everybody help. We’ll pile it up again.” He retrieved the pitchfork and set to work, flinging forkfuls of hay in the air while the children gathered up as much as they could hold.

They achieved a beautifully rounded stack that almost reached the rafters and instantly Kermit and Ethel flung themselves at it, squealing happily.

“Stop! You’ll tear it down,” yelled Ted, blinking as the last ray of sun through the shingles glinted off his spectacles. “I want it all round and pretty.”

“We’ll play Indians and this is the Bad Lands of Dakota,” said his father. “Ted and Kermit will be Indians and the girls and Archie and I will be the settlers hiding from them.”

“I want to be an Indian,” Archie protested. “I can yell loud.” He emitted a piercing whoop to prove it.

“Indians don’t yell,” said Ted, scornfully. “They creep out of ambush very stealthily.” He quoted triumphantly from the stories their father had read to them. “They like to surprise their victims.”

“When they’re on horseback they yell,” Roosevelt said. “But you’ll be prowling Indians. They know how to be still as mice. And twice as deadly.” He twined a spray of hay through Archie’s hair for a feather. Instantly Ted and Kermit had to have feathers too and tying knots in their short hair to hold a dry wisp of hay erect was a slow business.

“I wish we had some war paint,” said Ted, studying his brothers with grudging approval. “I could have used some of my water colors if I’d known we were going to play Indians.”

“You’d get it on your shirt and Mame would scold,” Kermit reminded him.

“She scolds anyway,” remarked Ted. “Mame is a very scoldy person.”

“Your faces are dirty enough to pass for Indians,” stated their father. “And remember that Mame is good and faithful and devoted to you children. You must always be kind to Mame and respectful and never talk back to her.”

“Ethel kicked her once,” Ted tattled.

“She swept up my paper doll hats. Anyway, I didn’t kick her hard and I got punished for it.”

Theodore Roosevelt knew that his children, indulged as they were in many ways, were sure that retribution for any misbehavior was certain and swift, relentlessly applied after any wrongdoing. His was always the correcting hand when he was at home, Edith always resigning that job to her husband, and he comforted himself with the idea that when they were bad they were still pretty good children. At least they were truthful, only Kermit now and then letting his facile imagination run ahead of him too fast but he was always sternly corrected for it, and as a rule his brothers and sisters dealt scornfully with his fancies.

“Now, the settlers will hide, and the Indians have to find them, and any redskin who is recognized gets shot,” Roosevelt outlined the rules.

“I wish I had a sunbonnet,” said Alice, as she made a little nest for herself far down in the warm hay. “Settlers’ wives always wore sunbonnets.”

“You’re wearing an imaginary sunbonnet,” said her father. “Tie it tightly under your chin and I’ll get my imaginary gun ready. Keep quiet, boys, and hide far down there behind the hay.”

He helped the girls to crouch deep in the dry stack, Alice disliking the tickle of the hay on her neck and impatiently slapping at it while Ethel burrowed happily as a mole.

“Holler when you’re ready,” called Ted from the opposite side of the stack.

“Settlers never let Indians know where they are hiding,” objected their father, who had dug himself deep into a pile; more excited and intrigued by the game than the young ones.

The Indians finally advanced, stealth being somewhat diminished by giggles from Archie and muttered orders to be quiet from Ted. Kermit gave a war whoop as he sprang at his father but landed in a heap where Roosevelt promptly dispatched him with an imaginary pistol and a very realistic “Bang.” Farther around the pile there were screams and snarls as Ted crept down on Ethel and grabbed her pig-tailed hair.

“You’re scalped!” he shouted. “You’re dead and scalped!”

Ethel promptly rolled on her back, walled up her eyes and made a melancholy face so realistic that Ted began to whimper.

“Make her stop, Father! She’s scaring me!”

“The game is over,” announced Roosevelt, lifting Kermit to his feet. Close by Alice and Archie had been tussling, Alice subduing the attack by tickling the Indian till he squirmed and giggled. “Brush the hay off your clothes. Now we’ll mend the stack again and see who can jump the farthest.”

“Oh, that’s easy!” bragged Ethel, reviving from the dead. “I can. I always do beat the boys.”

“You can’t beat me if Father will hold my glasses,” Ted objected.

“Stack hay and don’t argue. Archie, take off your jacket, you’ve got the back of your shirt full of hay.”

“It’s inside mine too,” said Kermit. “It scratches.”

“If we had been real Indians we wouldn’t have on shirts, we’d just have some stripes of war paint.” Ted began busily piling up the hay. “That game wasn’t fair anyway because Archie giggled and Alice forgot to shoot quick.”

“He fell on me.” She stood up. “Oh me! There’s Mame, scared to death to climb the ladder. Father, don’t make us go in yet.”

Mame’s head, wrapped in a crocheted wool scarf, showed halfway up the ladder. “Gentlemen to see the Colonel,” she announced, “Mrs. Roosevelt says it’s important.”

“Don’t go, Father,” pleaded Ted. “Tell Mother to send them away.”

“I can’t do that, Ted, because from now on I’m the servant of the people of New York. Ask them to wait by the fire, Mame, tell them I’ll be in presently.” Roosevelt shook the hay from his shirt and jacket and studied the disappointed faces of his children. All the faces were definitely grimy but each one reflected woe.

“Go ahead,” Roosevelt directed when Mame had backed gingerly down the ladder. “Oldest jump first. See how high you can land on the hay. We can jump for ten minutes.” He took out his watch.

Fifteen minutes later he led his bedraggled, breathless crew back to the house, entering through the rear door though usually he was most unconcerned about his own appearance, especially when the children were with him. But now, with his new responsibilities, he was beginning to be aware that he owed a certain distinction of attire to these people who had elected him to the most important office in the most important state. Also he was thinking uneasily of Edith’s carefully disciplined but inwardly disapproving attitude.

Mame met them in the hall, her own disapproval not masked at all. “I declare, you always seem to bring them back looking like ragamuffins, Colonel Roosevelt! Hurry up, all of you! Colonel, you’ve got a dirty face yourself. Your guests are in the library. Mrs. Roosevelt had me serve them some wine.”

As he hurried up the stairs Roosevelt was hoping that this waiting group would not be church dignitaries or any others who would resent being served wine. Edith was in their room changing for dinner after tending Quentin all afternoon. She looked at him and shook her head.

“Well, at least you did come up to change.” She sounded relieved. “I don’t know who they are. Mame let them in. After tending the baby all afternoon I wasn’t presentable myself. The nurse will be back at nine o’clock, thank goodness. I let her go home for Christmas. Hurry and change. They’ve already been there half an hour, with a horse waiting out there in the cold.”

Through the window they could see a handsome bay horse and smart carriage waiting outside, the horse well blanketed and secured by an iron weight.

“Looks really important,” said Theodore, as he washed the dust of the loft off his face. “But they could have waited till Christmas was over and given a man a chance for a day in peace with his family.”

“Tomorrow it will be worse,” she reminded him. “You’ll have to be excused to sort your papers and I shall have to oversee the packing. We have just four days to get to Albany and I’d hate you to miss your own inauguration ceremony.”

“Is this jacket all right? After all, I’m supposed to be informal at home.”

“It will do. Straighten your tie. You always seem to get the knot slightly crooked.”

“So you will have some reason to notice me, my dear.”

He kissed her, grinning like a boy, and hurried down the stairs thinking that his Edith was still the loveliest thing alive and the best thing that had ever happened to one Theodore Roosevelt.

The three men rose as he entered the library and introduced themselves, though he already knew their identity having had some dealings with them when he was Police Commissioner of New York City. They were all members of the Board of Authority, a department of the city government, and immediately Roosevelt sensed that their mission was to gain some advantage in advance from the governor-elect.

The idea angered him and he made an excuse to mend the fire, poking and banging till he had worked off his momentary attack of spleen. Then he was ready for their proposal which came promptly, voiced in turn by each of the three. Roosevelt said nothing, sitting rubbing the back of his neck as he often did absently when he was trying to keep a cool head, a thing that with his impetuous nature and itch for action was not easy for him to do.

Finally, when their bland recital of their purpose in coming here—intruding on a father’s holiday at home—was all stated, the last part in concert, he jumped to his feet, paced across the room and back and braced himself facing them.

“Gentlemen, you have asked me to intervene in this matter which primarily affects only the City of New York, and your office, authority and functions in that city. Let me remind you in the first instance that I am not yet governor of New York nor will I be for several days. Secondly, I remind you that interference of this type is no function of the governor, and that your appeal (if it is an appeal) should be lodged with the proper authority to consider it. After that, gentlemen, I bid you good day.”

The three men went out grumbling and Theodore stamped up the stairs angrily, to where Edith sat by the fire, rocking Quentin, who had the sniffles, to sleep.

“Low, unprincipled scoundrels,” he stormed, “coming out here on Christmas Day to ask a favor of me knowing all the time it would be utterly outside all order and sense for me even to consider it.”

“There will be a great deal of that in a state like New York,” Edith reminded him. “You might as well make up your mind to accept it and be able to combat it calmly. Your experience as Police Commissioner certainly taught you that.” Edith was not too certain in her mind that anything she said would do any good. Theodore’s first impulse was always to fight any imposition or injustice toward himself or any other innocent party, whether the war was waged against the oppressed Cubans or against civic or national righteousness.

That he was usually effective only increased his crusader’s urge and his wife had her own moments of trepidation about facing his career as governor. She had a clear and analytic mind that was always able to face truth even in its ugliest mien and she had a quiet dread of all those stone walls of intrenched selfishness and evil against which Theodore Roosevelt’s militant nature might hurl itself in vain. He had had so many high periods of satisfaction and achievement these past years he had become an idol to many but she knew that from the dawn of the history of the world the lands of it had been paved with the scattered dust of fallen idols.

She said then, “Mame is bathing the boys and Ethel, and they’ll go to bed early. Then you and I and Alice will have a quiet supper downstairs. The cook came in just a few minutes ago. Poor soul, she spent nearly the whole of Christmas afternoon just going over to see her sister and carry her a white fascinator she had crocheted. She was too conscientious about her duty here to take time even for a Christmas visit.”

But Theodore was still not soothed or mollified. “Those fellows who came here had the presumption to ask me to intervene in a civic matter that concerns only their own interests in the City of New York.” He resumed his angry self-justification, “I practically showed them the door. They were important men and politically powerful and now I have undoubtedly made three powerful and influential enemies.”

“You’ll make more, Theodore. You always have when you were in a position of power just as every man does.”

“Those fellows infuriated me by implying that at this stage of my public life I would risk being devious. All right, my dear, I won’t let them spoil our Christmas, what’s left of it. You are an angel to listen so understandingly to my tantrums. And before I forget it let me tell you you are just as pretty and sweet and cute as you were when you were sixteen years old.” He bent and kissed her.

“When I was sixteen I was an awful prig,” she said. “I remember. I wasn’t much better when you married me.”

“You were perfect when you married me. I was the humblest, most grateful man on earth that you were willing to risk a life with a rough, tactless fellow like me. But it has all been pretty good, hasn’t it, Edie? Now,” he promised, “it will be even better.”

Alice came in then looking a trifle wan. “Aren’t we going to have supper soon? I’m starving. The boys and Ethel are eating already in the nursery. I tried to beg a piece of cold turkey but Mame made me go out and leave them alone. Mame,” she remarked, with a little flare of self-importance, “ought to realize that I’m almost a young lady.”

“Mame will realize it when you act like a young lady,” said her father, “and not like a spoiled child. Let’s go now. Mother has to put the baby to bed, then she’ll be down.”

He took his daughter’s hand, though he sensed that irritated her, but squeezed it gently with a comradely pressure and they ran down the last few steps laughing as they entered the dining room, where a cold supper was spread.

“We’re both out of breath,” he remarked. “We’ve got to run more. We’ll start tomorrow. In Albany—”

“I don’t want to go,” she wailed abruptly. “I want to stay here.”

“We’d all like to stay here,” he said, “even if there are times when this house is as hard to heat as it has been lately.”

“Davis tends the furnace better,” said Alice with the bluntness that was beginning to be a characteristic of hers. It was like his own forthrightness, he admitted. Fortunately as the years went on an acquired tact and his innate kindness saved him from too many blunders, and Edith’s influence helped tame his impetuous instinct to speak out before he thoughtfully considered a subject.

Edith came in then and Roosevelt gallantly seated his wife and daughter, making both gestures equally formal to Alice’s evident approval. Then he picked up the carving knife but laid it down at an admonishing look from Edith.

“Alice, will you say grace?” he asked politely.

When she had finished he surveyed the remains of what had been a huge turkey.

“Our bird seems to have suffered from the ravages of a hungry tribe of Roosevelts,” he turned it over. “I do find a little dark meat left and some dressing. And oh yes, here is the intact remainder of the liver. Alice, you may have that. It makes red blood and you’ll need it when you tackle the beginnings of algebra and French. My dear,” he bowed across the table, “how will you have your bones?”

“Anything edible,” said Edith. “I’m not at all particular.”

She sat at the foot of the table looking every inch the poised, self-contained and gracious mistress of his house. He knew that she was good for him, taming his occasional warlike impulses as perhaps no other woman could have done. One quieting word from her was usually enough to steady him and calm his rages as she had just done without in the least appearing to do, upstairs.

Alice began her argument again. “Mother, why can’t I go to Albany with the rest of the family?”

“Because your mother’s family want you to have every advantage, Alice.” Edith spoke quietly, waving off an interruption from Theodore with a flick of her hand, “You must be grateful for them and for the education they are able to give you. A girl like you is born with an obligation to make the most of herself and I am sure you will, as I hope my own children will too.”

“That sounds like a lecture,” fretted Alice. “I’ll get enough lectures from my aunts and grandmother. They are always lecturing me to be a lady and I think ladies are stupid. I’d like to go to Dakota with Father and be a cowgirl. I ride better then the boys do now.”

“Your aunt will probably see to it that you have riding lessons in New York,” Edith said.

“I know about those. Side saddle and a derby hat and horses so slow and stodgy they won’t gallop. I had some the last time I was there at grandmother’s, with a silly groom leading the horse around by the bridle.”

Edith sighed. She had devotedly tried to do her best for Theodore’s daughter but Alice, like her father, had been born a rebel with an individuality that would always resent any set pattern of behavior. At least, Edith comforted herself, the responsibility was not hers alone nor could she reproach herself if inherited traits were too strong. Thank goodness there was no rampant individuality in her own small daughter! Ethel was usually as placid as a Dutch housewife, though she could not be imposed upon and always stood stubbornly for her own rights.

Dinner was not quite over when two small figures appeared at the dining room door. In their nightclothes Kermit and Ethel stood there, their small feet blue with cold.

“Go back to bed quickly, you’ll catch your death of cold!” their mother scolded, herding them back toward the stairway.

“I’ll come along,” said Theodore. “I’ll just go back and find the chivalry book, as Ted calls it.”

“You spoil them,” protested his wife. “They were up before dawn this morning.”

“Early yet,” he made excuse, “only a little after eight.”

“It’s almost nine,” she corrected. “Supper was late because Christmas upset the household routine. Jump in bed, both of you. Kermit, wait—we’ll have to wipe off the bottoms of your feet. You forgot your slippers again.”

“They fall off. Anyway, they’re not so very dirty.”

“Too black for the sheets.” Mame came in then as Edith was tucking the covers around Ethel.

“They slipped out when I was back in my room,” she explained. “Kermit is always slipping out of his bed. He’d sleep under it half the time if I didn’t watch him, makes me feel like tying him into it.”

“I can untie knots,” he said defiantly, “or I could chew the rope in two.”

“Don’t be saucy,” his mother said, sponging the thin grimy toes. “Run along, Mame, Colonel Roosevelt is coming up to read to them.”

“It’ll be battles or Injun fighting and get them all stirred up and excited,” grumbled Mame as she went out.

Alice followed her father into the nursery. “I’m surely glad I have my own room,” she said. “There’s just no peace or privacy in this nursery any more.”

“It’s time you were in bed too, Alice,” said her stepmother. “You were up before dawn this morning.”

“I want to hear the story,” Alice was plaintive. “I promise to go to bed right after. After all I won’t be with Father very much longer.”

“Let her stay, I’ll hustle her to bed right after,” said Roosevelt.

Ted sat up, regarded the book his father was opening. “I vote for Sir Lancelot,” he announced firmly.

“I vote for dragons,” said Kermit. “I like stories with dragons with fire coming out their noses.”

“Are there any dragons in Dakota, Father?” Ethel wanted to know. “Where you shot all the animals? Those up on the wall?”

“Of course not!” Alice was scornful. “Dragons are a fairy tale like gnomes and giants.”

“Goliath wasn’t a fairy tale,” declared Ted. “He is in the Bible and the Bible is the Word of God.”

“Goliath was a tall, strong man,” said his father. “We still see and hear of very tall, strong men who in that day when most men were short would have been called giants. I knew a cowhand in the West who was seven feet tall without his boots. When he rode an average size cow pony his feet almost touched the ground, he could step over a yearling calf or a fence as easily as you can step over a threshold.”

“I can jump over a fence,” bragged Kermit, “if I can climb up a little way.”

“Ponies can jump over without climbing,” said Ted, “but they have very strong muscles in their back legs. They can kick hard too. Grant kicked a pig once and made him roll over and squeal loud. He tried to eat my straw hat once too.”

“You were crawling around under his front legs. He saw the hat and thought it was good to eat,” Alice defended her pet pony.

“That was the summer Father found the big hollow tree and he let us down inside it on a rope. You wouldn’t remember that, Ethel, you were just a baby.”

“She was three. Father let her down too,” Alice recalled, “and she was scared to death and screamed.”

“It was dark down there,” said their father. “We will now end all reminiscing and read the book. But first, Alice, toss a little light wood on that fire.”

“I like open fires better than radiators,” Alice said. “On radiators you can’t toast marshmallows. And if you put your feet on one with rubbers on they smell awful.”