Part 2

Fraylir took her out to dinner and to the summer gardens. She tried to show him how sympathetic she could be. It surprised her to find out that she really meant it. She was almost afraid to use all of the little tricks that she had learned in Black Plains. It didn’t seem honest.

Sometimes Edward Fraylir went with them, but usually the two of them went alone.

She got a letter saying that Millie was married—she had finally landed the drummer who travelled out of Kansas City. And Irma, next youngest, was going with a Black Plains boy who kept a cigar store. Emma had to write back that she was still working and she took the answering jokes about her city success without a murmur. After all, there were so many things besides getting a rich papa!

And then, one night without warning—

Frederick Fraylir and Emma had stayed in the office after the others had gone. There was some work that had to be copied and they were going to have dinner together. As Emma slipped the last page from the typewriter, Frederick bent over her.

“Little girl,” he said, “do you know that I care very much for you?” Emma closed her eyes. She was afraid to say anything. Why couldn’t things have kept on—the way they were? Her heart was beating rather rapidly. She had never thought about that.

“Don’t you care, a little?” Frederick went on. “You must have known, how I felt, all these weeks.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Emma. She suddenly remembered that that was the right answer, though she was afraid that she had put it in the wrong place.

“Why, I mean,” said Frederick, “that I love you. I’ve cared for you from the first. It’s hard to say—for an old fellow like me. You are so innocent, so sweet. You are so little and alone and unprotected. I love you, I want to—”

Well, so it was over! “What about Mrs. Fraylir?” interrupted Emma. Mrs. Fraylir had never been brought into their conversation before. The words seemed to choke Emma a little.

“Why, dear, she likes you too. She told Edward that as long as I felt this way, she hoped you liked me. She wanted to talk to you when she came to the office, but she was afraid she’d say the wrong thing, as long as I hadn’t said anything to you. I know you’ll like her, though. Edward and she will be glad they won’t have to bother with me, I guess. Ever since they’ve been married, over seven years, I’ve lived with them. They said they wanted me, but I guess they’ll be glad if—” he paused.

“Ever since they’ve been married?” repeated Emma, mechanically. “I thought, why I thought—”

Frederick misunderstood her.

“Oh, yes,” he said, “seven years, and I’d like a home of my own. We can be married whenever you say the word, if you love me a little and I’m not too old. I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time, wanted to offer you a real home, wanted you to stop work, but you were so young, so unaccustomed to the world. I wanted you to know me and like me a little first, so that I wouldn’t frighten you when I proposed. You’re the kind of a girl I’ve always been looking for, a simple, small-town girl with pure thoughts about things. You’ll marry me, won’t you, dear?”

And Emma, quite overcome, put her head on his shoulder and wept a little and said she thought she would. After all, she was all alone in the city and only a little country girl.

GRANDMA

I

Grandma awoke with a start. She gained consciousness with the feeling that something was just about to happen. Then she sank back again on the pillow with a comfortable sigh of remembrance. Of course—this was the day on which she was going travelling.

Even on usual days, Grandma could not lie in bed, idle. So much more reason why she should be up and about, to-day, with so much to do. Her train left at twelve o’clock—she had had her ticket and her berth reservation for over a week, her trunk was all packed, there were just a few necessary articles to put into her bag—but the morning would be busy, as all mornings were at Fred’s.

Grandma bathed and dressed hurriedly, her bent, rheumatic fingers grasping each hook and button with a nervous haste. As usual, she was the first one in the bathroom. This morning she was especially glad. For at Fred’s, Grandma’s second son’s house, where she was visiting now, there was only one bathroom and there were eight in the family without her, if you count the two babies. If you didn’t get in the bathroom first....

Grandma put on her neat housedress, as was her wont. She could change her dress later, and stuff the housedress into her bag. She arranged her thin grey hair in neat waves around her face—she could smooth that again, too.

From a room at the other end of the house Grandma heard a baby commence to cry. It was Ruthie, Nell’s youngest baby, just a year old, one of Grandma’s two great-grandchildren. Grandma loved little Ruthie a great deal, a fine baby—still, it did seem good that she wouldn’t have to take care of her any more for a long time. Not that Grandma minded work—she had always worked, she liked something to do—but here at Fred’s house there were so few moments when she wasn’t working. Not that Fred’s family were mean to her! Grandma would have been indignant if you had suggested that. Didn’t they work as hard as she did, and harder? At seventy-three, Grandma was still strong and capable; no wonder they expected her to do her share and accepted it without comment.

Fred was a good son and a good husband and a good father. Could you expect much more? But Fred never had much of a business head. Here he was, at forty-nine, just about where he had been fifteen years before, bookkeeper at the Harper Feed Store, a good enough position when times were better, but, with everything so high, Fred’s salary didn’t go very far. Still, no use complaining or worrying him about it, it was the best he could do. Fred never had had much ambition or “get up.” It was a good thing he had bought the house, years before. It had seemed too big and rambling then. It was just about the right size now, though not so awfully modern—and quite hard to keep clean.

Emma, Fred’s wife, was a good woman and a good housekeeper. She wasn’t like the average daughter-in-law, either. She never quarrelled with Grandma about things—in fact, she was awfully kind, in her hurried, brusque way. Grandma sometimes wished she wasn’t so quick about things, and decided—still, when one is as busy as Emma....

Emma was nearly Fred’s age. They had been married twenty-five years and she had always been a good wife to him. They had three children, all girls. Grandma had been sorry there couldn’t have been a son to help Fred share the burden of supporting the family. But things seemed going all right now—a little better than they had been, or so the family seemed to think—and, as long as they were satisfied....

Nell, Fred’s oldest daughter, had married, four years before, and had gone to housekeeping. But Homer Billingsley, the boy she had married, had been sick for almost a year, so they had given up their little cottage and were living “with the old folks.” They had two children now, Freddie and Ruthie, nice good children, too. Grandma liked Homer, Nell’s husband, though she was sorry he was so much like Fred in his lack of ambition and power. Now that Homer was able to work again he had his old job at Malton’s Hardware Store. There didn’t seem much chance of his getting ahead there. Still, he was a good boy and awfully fond of Nell and the children.

Edna, Fred’s second daughter, was stenographer at the First National Bank and made fifteen dollars a week. Edna was fine looking, really the beauty of the family. She paid her board every week, but never had much left over because she bought Alice’s clothes, too, and, of course, being in the bank, she had to look nice herself. Alice, the youngest daughter, was seventeen and in High School. Grandma loved Alice, too. Of course the child was thoughtless, she could have helped her mother a little more with the housework or Nell with the babies, but Grandma knew that, at seventeen, it’s pretty hard to sweep floors or take babies out. After all, Alice was young, and she ought to have a good time.

While she stayed at Fred’s house, Grandma did her share of the work. Even this last morning she followed her usual routine.

She hurried to the room where Ruthie lay and soon had her quieted. When Ruthie had her bottle—Grandma had learned all about sterilizing, though she hadn’t known there was such a thing when she brought up her own children—Grandma set the table, a plate, knife and spoon for each, salt and pepper castors that had been a wedding present to Emma and Fred, a butter dish with an uneven piece of butter in it, a sugar bowl containing rather lumpy sugar and a fluted sugar spoon, a dish of home-made plum preserves. She had the table all set when Emma hurried into the kitchen with a cheery, abrupt “Morning, Ma,” and started the coffee.

At half-past seven all but Alice were ready for breakfast. Grandma had got the oatmeal out of the fireless cooker and boiled the eggs for Homer, who was rather delicate and needed eggs for breakfast. When the family sat down to their meal, Grandma put milk and sugar on little Freddie’s oatmeal and saw that he ate it—Freddie didn’t like oatmeal much.

“Well, Ma,” said big Fred, who sat comfortably coatless, “so to-day’s the day you go travelling.”

“Yes, it is,” said Grandma and smiled.

“You got a good day for it. Let’s see, you leave Lexington to-day at noon and get to New York to-morrow at two, don’t you?”

“Yes, Fred,” said Grandma.

“You know,” he went on, munching toast as he talked, “I believe you enjoy travelling, going places. Never saw anything like it. Seems to me a woman your age would want to settle down, quiet. You could stay here all the time if you wanted to, you know that. Got a room all to yourself—more than you get at Mary’s—and yet, off you go, after four or five months. Here you’ve got a good home and all that.”

“Well,” said Grandma, in her gentle, even tones, “you know you aren’t the only child I’ve got, Fred. There’s Albert and Mary.”

“Yes,” Fred frowned. He disliked even hearing the name of Albert. It was the one thing that made him angry. “But we really want you, honest we do, Ma. Emma and the girls always miss you after you’re gone.”

“You bet,” said Emma.

Grandma smiled. At least at Fred’s home she was welcome and helpful. If she were only younger and stronger! At Mary’s and Albert’s, there was a wordless agreement that her visits end, almost mechanically, at the end of four months. Only mere surface invitations of further hospitality were extended “for politeness.”

Fred and Homer finished eating and hurried off to business. Alice came down, then, and Grandma served her, bringing in hot coffee and oatmeal, as Emma started to clear away the dishes.

Alice ate rapidly, then kissed Grandma good-bye—she didn’t come home at noon—and skipped off. Grandma and her daughter-in-law washed the dishes and, when the dishes were done, they made the beds, one standing on each side, straightening the sheets and pulling up the covers simultaneously.

“Sure will miss you, Ma,” said Emma. “Nell’s no help at all. Don’t blame her. Freddie tagging at her heels and the baby crying.”

While Emma straightened up the downstairs rooms, Grandma helped Nell bathe and dress the babies. Then the expressman rang and Grandma hurried to the door, saw that he took her trunk and put the check in her purse. Then Grandma cleaned up the room she had occupied. It was time, then, for Grandma to get ready for her journey. Usually, she helped prepare dinner after these tasks were done, peeling potatoes, setting the table, for at Fred’s one ate dinner in the middle of the day.

Grandma put on her travelling dress. It was her best dress, of soft grey silk crêpe, trimmed with a bit of fine cream lace at the throat. Albert had given it to her on her birthday, two years before. Over this she put her best coat of black ribbed silk, also a gift of Albert. She adjusted her neat bonnet—five years old but made over every year and you’d never guess it.

Emma and Nell were too busy with dinner and the babies to go to the station with Grandma, but the street-car that passed the corner went right to the station, and Homer and Fred would be there to tell her good-bye. At eleven—Grandma believed in taking plenty of time, you never could tell what might happen on the way to the station—Grandma kissed Emma and Nell and Freddie and Ruthie, giving Ruthie a very tender hug and Freddie a hearty kiss, in spite of much stickiness from the penny lollypop he had been eating. She took her bag and hurrying as fast as she could—Grandma took little, slow rheumatic steps—she caught the surface car.

In the railway station Grandma sat down gingerly on one of the long brown benches, carefully pulling her skirts away from suspicious tobaccoy-looking spots on the floor, and waited for Fred and Homer and the train.

Fred and Homer came up, together, puffing, just before the train was due. Homer presented Grandma with a half-pound box of candy and Fred gave her a paper bag filled with fruit.

When the train came in, Fred and Homer both assisted Grandma in getting on, took her to her seat and kissed her, loudly, before their hurried exit—the Limited stops for only a minute at Lexington.

Then, as the train moved away, Grandma waved a fluttering good-bye to the two men and sighed again, with happiness. She was travelling!

II

Not consciously, of course, for she never would have admitted such a terrible fact, Grandma looked forward, all year, to her days of travel. Usually, each year contained three trips, each of about the same length, and these days were Grandma’s golden milestones. Not that she wasn’t happy the rest of the time—of course she was—but this—well, this was different.

At Fred’s now—Grandma was happy at Fred’s, of course, every one was friendly and pleasant, though her feet and head and sometimes her back ached at the end of the day. One isn’t so young at seventy-three and younger people are apt to forget how tired seventy-three becomes, after innumerable answerings of the door, step-climbing and dish-washing. Grandma loved being useful, of course, but she did wish that there was a little more leisure, a little time to sit down and rest—if only Fred’s and Albert’s homes could be combined, in some way!

Grandma had three children. When they were young there had never been much money, but Grandma had tried to do her best for them. They had lived in Lexington then, and the three had been brought up just alike and yet how differently they had turned out! There was Fred, quite poor but happy, still in Lexington, where he was born. Mary had married John Falconer when she was twenty-four and had gone to St. Louis to live, and Albert, the ambitious one of the family, had gone to New York in search of fortune and had found part of it, at least.

If only Fred and Albert hadn’t been so foolish and quarrelled, years ago! But they had. Albert had tried to give Fred advice and Fred had resented it. They had made up the quarrel, but there was nothing that Fred would let Albert do for him, even if Albert had wanted to do something. Fred liked to refer, in scorn, to his elder brother as “that New York millionaire,” and say things about being “just as well off if I haven’t got his money.” But then, Albert probably forgot, most of the time, that he had a younger brother. Outside of a polite inquiry, when Grandma arrived, he never referred to Fred at all. It worried Grandma to think that her children weren’t good friends, but she knew she could never do anything to make them feel differently. Years and circumstances had taken them too far apart.

Grandma had no favorite child, unless it was a slight, natural leaning toward her only daughter. She liked Albert and was glad she was on her way to visit him. She just wished that Albert wasn’t so—well, so cold. He didn’t mean anything, of course. When one is busy all day on the Stock Exchange one hasn’t time for other things. And, when one is as rich as Albert, there are so many things to take up one’s time. Albert was awfully good to Grandma. She told herself that many times. He asked her if she needed anything, whenever she visited him. He frequently gave her expensive presents. She wouldn’t take any more money from him than she had to, and her wants were simple, for that wouldn’t have been right, though she let him give her some on her last visit and had given it to Nell for Homer—he had been sick then—without letting Fred find out.

Grandma liked it all right at Albert’s. How could there be anything to complain of? At seventy-three, Grandma had learned to make the best of things. Albert was Grandma’s oldest child and now he was fifty-two. His ménage consisted of his wife, Florence; their two children, Albert, junior, who, at twenty-four, was being taught the business of Wall Street; their daughter, Arlene, twenty, and six servants.

The Albert Cunninghams lived in a very large apartment in Park Avenue. Mrs. Cunningham was of rather a good New York family. Albert had met her after his first taste of success and had been greatly impressed with her and her antecedents. Even then Albert had learned to look ahead. The family had had some years of social strivings, but now lived rather quietly. Arlene had made her début the year before and now entertained and went out quite a little. Albert, junior, was rather a serious fellow, though he, too, enjoyed the social life that was open to him. Altogether, they were fairly sensible, decent people, a bit snobbish, perhaps, very self-centred, but with no really objectionable features.

The thing that Grandma couldn’t understand nor enjoy in the Albert Cunninghams’ family life was the, to her, great coldness and formality. Grandma’s idea of how a family ought to live was the way Fred’s family lived, only with more money and more leisure and more pleasure and a servant or two, friendly, jolly, intimate. At Albert’s, the life was strangely lonely and distant. Grandma never felt quite at ease nor at home. She had no definite place in the family life. She had the fear, constantly, that she was doing something wrong, much more so than at Mary’s, where her acts were criticized and commented on. No one ever gave Grandma a harsh word at Albert’s. Albert, dignified; Florence, courteous, calm; Junior, a young edition of his father; Arlene, gentle, distant, quiet,—were all kind to Grandma. But most of the time they unthinkingly ignored her. She didn’t fit in, she knew that.

At Albert’s, Grandma had her own room and her own bath, as did each member of the family. There was no regular “family breakfast.” Albert and Junior breakfasted about nine, going to the office in the closed car. Florence and Arlene breakfasted in their rooms. Grandma had gone to the dining-room for breakfast, on her first visit there eight years ago, after Grandpa died and her own modest home had been broken up. But Florence decided that it would be more comfortable for Grandma if she breakfasted in her room. So each morning, about nine, Grandma’s tray was brought up to her by Florence’s own maid, Terry, who asked, each time, “if there is anything I can do?” Grandma rather resented a personal maid. Wasn’t she able to bathe and dress herself, even if she was seventy-three? Grandma was always dressed when Terry knocked.

All day there was nothing for Grandma to do at Albert’s. She couldn’t help at all around the house. She found that out, at her first visit. There was no darning nor mending to be done—a sewing woman came in regularly to do the things that Terry could not do. Albert didn’t care for the home dishes that had once delighted him and the cook didn’t want any one bothering around the kitchen. Grandma had luncheon at one, with Florence and Arlene, when they were at home, which was seldom enough. In the afternoon, on nice days, Grandma went for a drive, unless the cars were being used. Usually Grandma went alone, getting real pleasure out of the things she saw; sometimes Florence went with her. Florence, too, occasionally took Grandma to teas and receptions and musicales, most of which bored Grandma and at none of which did she feel at home.

Grandma wondered where all of the old ladies were in New York. She seldom saw any. At the theatre, where she was taken once in a while, she would see white-haired old dowagers, carefully marcelled and massaged, in evening gowns with very low-cut bodices. Grandma didn’t mean that kind of old lady. She was always looking for comfortable old ladies, with neatly parted hair, ample old ladies with little rheumatic hands and wrinkles, but she never found them.

Dinner, at Albert’s, was at seven. When the family dined alone, at home, the meals were about the same, good things to eat, but everything so cold and distant. It was hard for Grandma to remember just what to do, so that Florence and Arlene wouldn’t think she didn’t know, though they were always polite and gracious. Grandma was constantly afraid she would spill things when the maid presented the silver dishes to her or that she’d take too large a portion for politeness. Grandma was served first—she couldn’t watch to see the way the others did.

When the family was having a real dinner party Grandma found that it was easier for every one if she had a tray in her room. She really liked that just as well—it was nice, seated at the little table in her room, comfortably unannoyed by manners. About half of the time the Albert Cunninghams did not dine at home—Arlene and Junior went to numerous dinners and even Florence and Albert had frequent engagements. Then Grandma usually dined alone in the big empty dining-room, a little, lonely figure amid empty chairs, silver and glass. She would have preferred a tray in her room, then, but didn’t like to mention it—this arrangement seemed to suit Florence. Grandma’s meals were always excellently prepared and served, but eating alone in a big, still room isn’t very jolly.

After dinner, Grandma was occasionally included in some social affair, but nearly always she was supposed to sit in the library until about nine or ten and then retire, as the other members of the family sometimes did when they were at home. The family saw that Grandma was given interesting light fiction and magazines full of stories and current events, but Grandma had never had enough leisure in her youth to find time to learn to enjoy reading. She could read only a short time without falling asleep.

Grandma knitted, too, so she was glad when the fad came back so she could be modern in something. Albert’s family approved of knitting, and on the last visit her old fingers had made many pairs of socks and sweaters for charity. Now she was glad to be able to get to knitting—she had had no time for it since she had been there before.

Yes—Albert and his family were awfully nice—of course they didn’t mean anything, when they paid no attention to Grandma, when their days went on as serenely undisturbed as if she were not there. They asked her how she felt, nearly every day, a cool “trust you are well this morning, Mother,” and gave her presents. But thinking of the lonely hours in her room, the tiresome evenings, the long, useless, dragged-out days, Grandma wasn’t enthusiastic over her visit with Albert.

III