Read Ebook: The home-maker by Fisher Dorothy Canfield

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Ebook has 1014 lines and 73063 words, and 21 pages

Mrs. Knapp's anxious face reddened with resentment. She went back to her own house and shut the door behind her hard.

Inside she began a systematic search of every possible hiding place, racing from one to another, now hot with anger, now cold with fear, sick, sick with uncertainty. She did not call the child now. She hunted him out silently and swiftly.

Her hand on the doorknob, she thought of one last place she had not searched. The dark hole under the stairs. She turned to that and flung back the curtain.

Stephen was there, his Teddy-bear clutched in his arms, silent, his round face grim and hard, scowling defiantly at her.

He sat down on the floor, holding the bear tightly in his arms, wave after wave of relief washing over him in a warm relaxing flood. All his life long, ever since he could remember, more than three years now, he had gone to sleep with his big Teddy in his arms. The sight of the faithful pointed face, like no other face, the friendly staring black eyes, the familiar feel of the dear, woolly body close to him--they were saturated with a thousand memories of peace, with a thousand associations of drowsy comfort and escape from trouble. Days when he had been punished and then shut, screaming furiously, into the bedroom to "cry it out," he had gone about blindly, feeling for Teddy through his tears, and, exhausted by his shrieking and kicking and anger, had often fallen asleep on the floor, Teddy in his arms, exercising that mystic power of consolation. The groove in Stephen's brain was worn deep and true; Teddy meant quiet and rest and safety ... and Stephen needed all he could get of those elements in his stormy little life, made up, so much of it, of fierce struggles against forces stronger than he.

Was it only four days ago that this new bitter phase of Stephen's struggle for existence had come up? Mother had taken him to call on a lady. They had walked and walked and walked, Stephen's short legs twinkling fast beside Mother's long, strong stride, his arm almost pulled out of the socket by the firm grasp on his mittened hand by which she drew him along at her pace. He had been breathless when they arrived, and filled with that ruffled, irritable, nervous fatigue which walking with Mother always gave him. Then, after long and intolerably dull conversation, during which Stephen had been obliged to "sit still and don't touch things," the lady had showed them that hideous, pitiable, tragic wreck, which she had said was a washed Teddy-bear. "It suddenly occurred to me, Mrs. Knapp, that the amount of dirt and microbes that creature had been accumulating for two years must be beyond words. Molly drags it around on the floor, as like as not...."

"Yes, just like Stephen with his Teddy," Stephen's mother said.

"And once I thought of it, it made me shudder. So I just put it in the tub and washed it. You see it came out all right."

But he had said nothing to Mother as they tore back across town, Mother in a hurry about getting her supper on time. Mother prided herself on never yet having set a meal on the table a single minute late. He said nothing, partly because he had no breath left over from his wild leaps from curb to paving and from paving to curb; and partly because he had not the slightest idea how to express the alarm, the bleeding grief, within him. Stephen's life so far had developed in him more capacity for screaming and kicking and biting than for analyzing and expressing his feelings in words.

That night Mother had taken Teddy away--treacherously, while Stephen was asleep. The next morning she announced that now she thought of the dirt and microbes on Teddy it made her shudder and as soon as she found time she would wash him and give him back to Stephen. Stephen had been filled with a silent frenzy every time he thought of it.

He went downstairs to find Mother, his lower lip trembling a little with his hope and fear, as Mother had not seen it since Stephen was a little tiny baby. Nor did she see it this time.

He went to the kitchen door and looked in, and instantly knew through a thousand familiar channels that it would do no good to tell Mother, then--or ever. The kitchen was full, full to suffocation with waves of revolt, and exasperation, and haste, and furious determination, which clashed together in the air above that quivering, energetic figure kneeling on the floor. They beat savagely on the anxious face of the little boy. He recognized them from the many times he had felt them and drew back from them, an instant reflection of revolt and determination lurid on his own face. How could he have thought, even for a moment, of telling Mother!

He turned away clutching Teddy and looked about him wildly. All around him was the inexorable prison of his warm, clean, well-ordered home. No escape. No appeal. No way to protect what was dear to him! There fell upon him that most sickening and poisonous of human emotions, the sensation of utter helplessness before physical violence. Mother would take Teddy away and do whatever she pleased with him because she was stronger than Stephen. The brute forces of jungle life yelled loud in Stephen's ears and mocked at his helplessness.

But Stephen was no Henry or Helen to droop, to shrink and quail. He fled to his own refuge, the only one which left him a shred of human dignity: fierce, hopeless, endless resistance: the determination of every brave despairing heart confronted with hopeless odds, at least to sell his safety dear; to fight as long as his strength held out: never, never to surrender of his own accord. Over something priceless, over what made him Stephen, the little boy stood guard savagely with the only weapons he had.

First of all he would hide. He would hold Teddy in his arms as long as he could, and hide, and let Mother call to him all she wanted to, while he braced himself to endure with courage the tortures which would inevitably follow ... the scolding which Mother called "talking to him," the beating invisible waves of fury flaming at him from all over Mother, which made Stephen suffer more than the physical blows which always ended things, for by the time they arrived he was usually so rigid with hysteria himself that he did not feel them much.

Under the stairs ... she would not think of that for a long time. He crept in over the immaculately clean floor, drew the curtains back of him, and sat upright, cross-legged, holding Teddy to his breast with all his might, dry-eyed, scowling, a magnificent sulphurous conflagration of Promethean flames blazing in his little heart.

When Lester Knapp stepped dispiritedly out from Willing's Emporium, he felt, as he usually did, a thin little mittened hand slip into each of his.

"Hello, Father," said Helen.

"Hello, Father," said Henry.

"Hello, children," said Father, squeezing their hands up tightly and looking down into their upturned faces.

"How's tricks?" he asked, as they stepped off, his lagging step suddenly brisk. "What did the teacher say to that composition, Helen?"

In front of the delicatessen-grocery store at the corner of their street, the father suddenly drew them to a halt. "What was it Mother asked me to bring home with me?" He spoke anxiously, and anxiously the children looked up at him. Suppose he should not be able to remember it!

But he did. It was a package of oatmeal and a yeast-cake. He dragged them triumphantly up from his memory.

While the grocer wrapped up her purchases she stooped her fair smiling face towards Helen to say, "My gracious, honey, how swell we do look in our new coat! Where did Momma buy that for you?"

Helen looked down at it as if to see what coat it was, as if she had forgotten that she wore a coat. Then she said, "She made it, Mother made it, out of an old coat Gramma Houghton sent us. The collar and cuffs are off Cousin Celia's last-winter one."

She laughed again, as Aunt Mattie always did, just for the sake of laughing, gave Henry and Helen each a cookie out of her paper bag, and took up her boughten salad and boughten boiled ham and went off, repeating, "Now, folks, don't you go and give me away!"

The grocery store seemed very silent after she left. Mr. Knapp bought his yeast-cake and package of oatmeal and they went out without a word. They didn't feel like talking any more. The children were eating fast on their cookies to finish them before they reached home.

They turned up the walk to the house in silence, stood for some time scraping the snow and mud off their shoes on the wire mat at the foot of the steps and went on their toes up to the cocoa-fiber mat in front of the door.

When they finally opened the door and stepped in, an appetizing odor of hot chocolate and something fresh out of the oven met them. Also the sound of the clock striking half-past six. Good, they were on time. It was very important to be on time. Little Stephen sat on the bottom step of the stairs, waiting for them, his face swollen and mottled, his eyes very red, his mouth clamped shut in a hard line.

"Oh, gee! I bet Stevie's been bad again!" murmured Henry pityingly. He went quickly to his little brother and tried to toss him up. But the heavy child was too much of a weight for his thin arms. He only succeeded in giving him a great hug. Helen did this too, and laid the fresh, outdoor coolness of her cheek against the little boy's hot face, glazed by tears. They none of them made a sound.

Lester Knapp stood silently looking at them.

Their mother came to the door, fresh in a well-ironed, clean, gingham house-dress.

"Well, Evie dear, what's the news from home?" asked Lester, as the children separated and began quickly hanging up their wraps. Stephen slipped off back towards the kitchen.

"Oh, all right," she said in her dear, well-modulated voice, her eyes on Helen, to whom she now said quietly, with a crescendo effect of patient self-restraint, "Don't wriggle around on one foot that way to take off your rubbers. Sit down on a chair. No, not that one, it's too high. This one. Lay down your schoolbooks. You can't do anything with them under your arm. There are your mittens on the floor. Put them in your pocket and you'll know where to find them. Unless they're damp. Are they damp? If they are, take them into the kitchen and put them on the rack to dry." As the child turned away, she called after her, making her give a nervous jump, "Not too close to the stove, or they'll burn."

She turned to Henry now . He froze to immobility, looking at her out of timid shadowed eyes, as if like a squirrel, he hoped by standing very still to make himself small....

Apparently Henry had taken off his coat and hat satisfactorily and had suitably disposed of his mittens, for, after passing her eyes over his small person in one sweep, she turned away, saying over her shoulder, "I'm just going to put supper on the table. You'll have time to wash your hands while I dish up the things."

Henry drew a long breath and started upstairs. His father stood looking after him till with a little start he came to himself and followed.

The supper bell rang by the time their hands and faces were washed. Helen and Henry washed Stephen's. They did not talk. They kept their attention on what they were doing, rinsing out the wash-basin after they had finished, hanging the towels up smoothly and looking responsibly around them at the immaculate little room before they went downstairs.

The supper was exquisitely cooked, nourishing, light, daintily served. Scalloped potatoes, done to a turn; a broiled beefsteak with butter melting oozily on it; frothing, well-whipped chocolate; small golden biscuits made out of a health-flour.

The children tucked their clean napkins under their chins, spread them out carefully over their clean clothes and, all but Stephen, ate circumspectly.

"Nothing special happened to-day, then?" asked Mr. Knapp in a cheerful voice, looking over at the erect, well-coifed house-mother.

"Just the usual things," answered Mrs. Knapp, reaching out to push Henry's plate a little nearer to him. "I haven't been out anywhere, and nobody has been in. Stephen, don't eat so fast. Mattie telephoned. Their new car has come. Henry, do sit up straighter. You'll be positively hunchbacked if you keep stooping over so."

At the mention of Aunt Mattie and the new car, a self-conscious silence dropped over the older children and their father. They looked down at their plates.

"Helen, did you put salt on your potatoes?" asked her mother. "I don't put in as much as we like, because the doctor says Henry shouldn't eat things very salt."

"I put some on," said Helen.

"Enough?" asked her mother doubtfully. "You know it takes a lot for potatoes."

Helen tasted her potatoes, as though she had not till then thought about them. "Yes, there's enough," she said.

"Let me taste them," said her mother, holding out her hand for the plate. After she had tasted them she said, "Why, there's not nearly enough, they're perfectly flat. Here, give me that salt-cellar." She added the salt, tasted the potatoes again and pushed the plate back to Helen, who went on eating with small mouthfuls, chewing conscientiously.

There was another silence.

Mr. Knapp helped himself to another biscuit, and said as he spread it with butter, "Aren't these biscuits simply great! You'd never know, by the taste, they were good for you, would you?"

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