CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I

She came in upon them like a whirlwind, as they sat at the dinner table, and at the sight of their familiar faces, she gave a sort of sob of relief, and flung herself into a chair. They looked at her, pulling off her torn old gloves, and they had, both of them, an illusion that it was entirely _her_ house, _her_ home, that they had nothing to say in it.

Her face was pale and worn, and bright with hysterical excitement. It didn’t occur to her that she was expected to explain her presence; she was preoccupied with some thought of her own. Suddenly she looked up, at Frances.

“He’s gone!” she cried. “He would go. Into the army. I thought----” she broke into open sobbing, “I thought ... he was ... too thin ... but he left me a note ... to say they’ve taken him. Oh, _poor_ old Lionel! _Poor_ old darling!”

Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

“It’s so terribly pitiful!” she went on. “I never ... in all my life.... Oh, his arms are like little sticks....”

She turned fiercely on Mr. Petersen.

“The idea of _his_ being in the army, while _you_ sit at home, a big, hearty thing like you!” she cried, passionately. It was the same spirit which led so many women to press recruiting.

Mr. Petersen’s face turned scarlet. He cleared his throat, and answered at last, in his slow way:

“I don’t see----” he began.

“Of course you don’t! You never would. You haven’t any spirit in you. You just want to sit at home and----”

Frances intervened.

“I don’t think it’s quite your place to come here and abuse Mr. Petersen,” she said sternly.

“What have _you_ got to do with it?” asked Minnie, “it’s none of your business, that I can see.”

She dried her eyes and sat up straighter.

“Where are the babies?” she asked.

“Asleep,” Frances answered.

Minnie got up and went toward the door, but Frances intercepted her.

“Let them alone!” she ordered.

Minnie stared at her.

“What do you _mean_! They’re _my_ children.”

“They’re not! You’ve forfeited your right to them. You deserted them. You’ve disgraced them. I won’t ... I won’t let you disturb them!”

Minnie’s fine black eyes stared at her scornfully.

“They’re my children. I’ll do just as I think best about them. I’ve got on very well without consulting you so far, and I shan’t begin now.”

“Chris!” Frances appealed to Mr. Petersen, “Won’t you say something? You know she’s not fit to bring up children.”

“It takes an old maid to do that,” said Minnie.

That roused Mr. Petersen.

“Minnie,” he began, “it would be better--if you would consent....”

“I won’t consent to anything! I want my children, and I _will_ have them. I’m going to take them now.”

“But--I have something to say about it,” he protested.

“You haven’t! Sandra’s not yours, and little Robert’s _mine_. I asked a lawyer. You’re not my husband. You haven’t any claim on him.”

Frances rose.

“Minnie,” she said, “listen to me!”

She looked like the goddess Athene, so handsome, so stern, so just.

“You must have _some_ sort of conscience--_some_ standard--something I can appeal to.... You’ve wronged me, you’ve wronged Mr. Petersen, in the cruelest way. You’ve brought shame and suffering on innocent people. You’ve thought only of yourself and your own desires, and had no mercy on anyone who stood in your way. And now you want to do something still worse. Just for your own selfish gratification, you want to take those poor little children away from people who are able and willing to do everything for them--honourable and decent people----”

“I suppose you mean yourself,” said Minnie, “I suppose you and Chris intended to start housekeeping with _my_ children. Well, you can’t!”

“If you love them, Minnie, you can’t drag them into poverty and----”

“Oh, love, love, love!” cried Minnie impatiently. “What do you know about loving, anyway? When I love people, I fight for them. I’d die for them.... Or I’d murder. I’d do _anything_. I wouldn’t stop to reason and plan like you do. You couldn’t keep my babies away from me if you had an army of soldiers to help you.”

And she pushed by her sister and went upstairs.

They heard a sudden wild little shout.

“Oh, _Mummy_!” from Sandra. Then a number of sounds, Minnie walking about, opening bureau drawers, the creak of a rocking chair.

It tortured Mr. Petersen, brought back old days. He felt that if he went up now he would see Minnie in her horrible grey wrapper, with the baby in her arms, rocking away, just in the same way, with the gas turned low and Sandra sitting up in her crib. And then, when the baby was asleep, Minnie would come down, exhausted, sighing, but smiling too, and trail out into the kitchen, to look in the ice chest for something to eat. And then to sit on the arm of his chair and gossip.... He could not repress a groan.

“Oh, Minnie!” he whispered.

Frances looked at him with a pity not untinged with contempt. She knew he wasn’t thinking of the children at all.

“Chris!” she said, in a low voice.

“Yes?”

“_Don’t_ tell her--that we’re married!”

He nodded assent.

They remained at the table, in silence. There was nothing to do, nothing to say, but to wait for Minnie’s next move.

Presently she came downstairs, carrying the baby and holding Sandra by the hand, all of them dressed for the street. Minnie’s eyes were red; evidently she had been crying up there.

“Good-bye, Chris,” she said, rather wistfully, “I’m sorry about all this.... But I had to do it, really, for Sandra’s sake. And I did make you happy, and comfortable, didn’t I?”

“Yes, yes!” he cried, and actually believed that she had. The pathos of the anxious little figure overwhelmed him.

“Minnie!” he cried. “Wait! Just a minute!”

She turned again.

“If--your--he has gone in to the army--what will you have to live on?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “I’ll get on somehow.”

“_No!_ ... That can’t be.... For old times’ sake--let me help you--and the children. An allowance--a settlement of some sort....”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“Thank you, Chris dear,” she said, simply.

“If Frances will take the baby,” he suggested, “I’d like to speak to you in my office just a moment.”

So Frances sat in the dining-room, with the baby in her arms for the last time, holding Sandra’s little hand, forgotten and deserted, despoiled now of everything, while in the study Mr. Petersen wrote a generous cheque for Minnie.

She thought of the house in the suburbs, with the nursery and the playroom; even the new toys.

She thought of herself and Mr. Petersen married, for the sake of the children.

She thought of Minnie, who had carried off Lionel, and Lionel’s child, and Mr. Petersen’s child, and was now securing a supply of Mr. Petersen’s money.

She began to laugh heartily.

THE END

EPILOGUE

Mr. Petersen saw Minnie once again. He and Frances _did_ go to California to live, because they naturally couldn’t endure the mocking house in the suburbs, or the dreadful one in Brownsville Landing.

They did well enough; they were both able to make money and to save it; they were kind, industrious, charitable, very much respected. They never quarrelled, and never grew any more intimate or affectionate. A drab sort of life, and they knew it.

It was a good thing that Mr. Petersen was both thrifty and well-to-do, for Minnie’s demands on him were constant and outrageous. Her old obsession broke out again; she wrote asking for capital to start a boarding-house. The allowance he sent her didn’t suffice; she wanted, so she said, to become independent.

And did, in a most original way. All the money she took in from her boarders she regarded as profit, and belonging to her, while the bills, when they grew too pressing, were sent to Mr. Petersen with complicated and aggrieved letters complaining of the troubles of a landlady. Her independence was a heavy drain on him.

He asked Frances if she minded his going East to see her and the children once more.

“It’s ten years,” he said. “Robert’ll be quite a boy now.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” she answered, “I’d half like to see them myself; especially Minnie. I’m curious.”

Her boarding-house, so familiar to him financially, for which he was endlessly buying saucepans and tablecloths and towels, was a dingy old place in the west Twenties. Even from the outside it had the Minnie touch, bedraggled lace curtains and crooked shades.

He rang the bell, and waited with a fast beating heart. To see Minnie again, after all this time!

The door was opened reluctantly by a young girl. (Everything in that house was done reluctantly).

“Mrs. Naylor? I’ll see.... Is it about rooms?”

Surely that voice, that accent ...? He stared at her insistently in the darkness of the hall.

“Why!” he cried, “Isn’t it Sandra? Come into the light, my dear. Do you remember Uncle Chris?”

“I’ve heard Mother speak of you,” she answered listlessly, and turned up the gas.

“Oh, Sandra!” he cried again. “My dear ...! You’re--you don’t look very well!”

“I’m all right,” she replied, in languid surprise. “I’ve always been thin.”

“Thin!” he thought. “My child, you’re dying!”

But he said only that she was growing too fast, and smiled and patted her head.

He waited in the dark hall while she went to fetch her mother, and he was haunted by her awful and heart-breaking loveliness--the unmistakable shadow on her face.

She came back to lead him down into the basement. He noticed that there were holes in her stockings and that her dress was very shabby.

In the basement dining-room he found Minnie, and was welcomed without much cordiality. And if Sandra had shocked him in one way, Minnie shocked him in another. She was so much changed; so much older, she had quite a middle-aged look, she was much stouter, she was--he couldn’t deny it--she was almost common, with her bright eyes and her sharp nose and her double chin. And as badly dressed as ever, perhaps a little more spotty. Her old air of anxiety had left her, it was now no more than a shadow, a comfortable way of sighing at life in general. She was happier than she had ever been before. Her health was excellent, she was free to do as she pleased, and she was much admired. She had had more than one offer of marriage from boarders who respected the fortitude, the maternal affection and the business ability of this remarkable woman. But she had no further use for men.

“I’ve seen enough of them!” she would say. It was evident that she had suffered bitterly at their hands.

Her air towards Mr. Petersen implied that she was magnanimously willing to let bygones be bygones. They talked of the boarders; they were, for the most part, satisfactory, she said. The usual troubles, which one must expect in this life, above all if one were a woman alone in the world, and honest.

He spoke of Sandra. Minnie admitted that she was not strong, but that in her circumstances, she couldn’t do much for her.

“Send her out to us,” he urged. “The climate would be just the thing for her.”

“No, _thanks_!” Minnie answered, with irony, indicating her opinion of the tone of Mr. Petersen’s household.

He offered to pay for any course of treatment, for sending her away. But Minnie said, sharply, that it wasn’t necessary; she would outgrow her weakness; there wasn’t any reason for making such a fuss about it. He saw with amazement that this child whom she had formerly idolised was now the object of an unmistakable resentment which he could not comprehend. He wouldn’t have believed that it was jealousy; that as the child became a woman she became, to the instinctive female within Minnie, a rival. She was always trying to turn the talk away from Sandra to Robert. _He_ was clever, _he_ was obedient, he was, she said, altogether a comfort to her.

At last he came in from school, and Mr. Petersen ever afterward regretted his visit. If he could only have kept the memory of his stalwart tiny son, with his clear blue eyes and his gleeful smile!

This Robert was a pale, heavy boy of eleven or twelve, lazy, complacent, maddeningly adult in manner. He sat down with the conscious intention of entertaining this visitor, told him things he had read in the papers. It was evident he did not know he was speaking to his father. Mr. Petersen gave him some money, and in his heart completely disowned him.

Then he looked once more at _her_, a long, long look.

“Good-bye, Minnie!” he said.

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

the cultured spinister, Miss Vanderhof=> the cultured spinster, Miss Vanderhof {pg 60}

respecting his Southerness=> respecting his Southernness {pg 80}