Part + 

I + 

I + 

I + 

She was scrubbing furiously at a line of grease spots which led from the stove towards the door to the dining-room. That was where Henry had held the platter tilted as he carried the steak in yesterday. And yet if she had warned him once about that, she had a thousand times! Warned him, and begged of him, and implored him to be careful. The children simply paid no attention to what she said. None. She might as well talk to the wind. Hot grease too! That soaked into the wood so. She would never get it clean. + 

She shook the surplus of water from her scrubbing-brush, sat back on her heels, sprinkled cleaning-powder on the bristles⁠—the second can of cleaning-powder this month, and the price gone up so!⁠—and setting her strong teeth hard, flew at the spots again, her whole body tense with determination. + 

A sober-faced little boy in clean gingham rompers, with a dingy Teddy-bear in his arms, appeared at the door of the dining-room behind her, looked in cautiously, surveyed his mother’s quivering, energetic back for an instant, and retreated silently without being seen. + 

She stopped, breathless, dipped her hand into the pail of hot soapy water, and brought out a hemmed, substantial floor-cloth, clean and whole. When, with a quick twist, she had wrung this out, she wiped the suds from the floor and looked sharply at the place she had been scrubbing. + 

The grease spots still showed, implacably dark against the white wood about them. + 

Her face clouded, she gave a smothered exclamation and seized the scrubbing-brush again. + 

In the next room a bell tinkled. The telephone! It always rang when it would bother her most. + 

She dropped her brush, stood up with one powerful thrust of her body, and went to wipe her hands on the roller-towel which hung, smooth and well-ironed, by the sink. + 

The bell rang again. Exasperated by its unreasonableness, she darted across the dining-room and snatched the receiver from the hook. + 

“Yes, this is Mrs. Knapp.” + 

… ⁠ ⁠… + 

“Oh, it’s you, Mattie.” + 

… ⁠ ⁠… + 

“Oh, all about as usual here, thank you. Helen has one of her awful colds, but not so I have to keep her at home. And Henry’s upset again, that chronic trouble with his digestion. The doctor doesn’t seem to do him any good.” + 

… ⁠ ⁠… + 

“No, my eczema is no worse. On my arm now.” + 

… ⁠ ⁠… + 

“How could I keep it perfectly quiet? I have to use it! You know I have everything to do. And anyhow I don’t know that’s it’s any worse to use it. I keep it bandaged of course.” + 

… ⁠ ⁠… + 

“Oh, Stephen’s well enough. He’s never sick, you know. But into everything! He drives me frantic when I’m flying around and trying to get the work done up; and I don’t know what to do with him when he gets into those tantrums. It’ll be an awful relief to me when he starts to school with the others. Perhaps the teachers can do something with him. I don’t envy them.” + 

… ⁠ ⁠… + 

“Mercy, no, Mattie! How can you think of such a thing? I never can take the time for outings! I was right in the midst of scrubbing the kitchen floor when you rang up. I’m way behind in everything. I always am. There’s not a room in the house that’s fit to look at. And I’ve got to make some of those special health-flour biscuits for supper. The doctor said to keep trying them for Henry.” + 

… ⁠ ⁠… + 

“How can I go out more and rest more? You know what there is to do. Somebody’s got to do it.” + 

… ⁠ ⁠… + 

“Yes, I know that’s what the doctor keeps telling me. I’d just like to have him spend a day in my place and see how he thinks I could manage. Nobody understands! People talk as though I worked the way I do just to amuse myself. What else can I do? It’s all got to be done, hasn’t it?” + 

… ⁠ ⁠… + 

“No, it’s nice of you to suggest it, but I couldn’t manage it. It would just waste your time to come round this way and stop. It’s simply out of the question for me to think of going.” + 

… ⁠ ⁠… + 

“Well, thank you just the same. I appreciate your thinking of me. I’m sure I hope you have a lovely time.” + 

An ominous silence in the house greeted her as she hung up the receiver and turned away. What could Stephen be up to, now? She had not heard a sound from him for some time. That was always alarming from Stephen. + 

“Stephen!” She called quickly and stood listening for an answer, her fine dark brows drawn together tensely. + 

The house waited emptily with her for the answer which did not come. + 

“Stephen!” she shouted, turning so that her voice would carry up the stairs. + 

“Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick⁠—” whispered the little mantelpiece clock hurriedly in the silence. + 

She was rarely quiet enough to hear that sound, but when it did come to her ears, it always said pressingly, “So much to do! So much to do! So much to do!” + 

She looked at it and frowned. Half-past two already! And that floor only half scrubbed. What possessed people to call you up on the telephone at all hours? Didn’t anybody realize what she had to do! + 

“Stephen!” she called irritably, running upstairs. Was there anything more exasperating than to have a child not answer when you called? Helen and Henry had never dreamed of that when they had been his age. It was another one of his naughty tricks, a new one! He had a new one every day. And he always knew just when was the worst possible time to try one on. The water in her scrubbing pail was cooling off all the time and she had just filled up the reservoir of the kitchen stove with cold, so that she couldn’t have another pailful of hot for an hour. + 

“Stephen!” The thought of the cooling water raised the heat of her resentment against the child. + 

She looked hastily into the spotless bathroom, the bedroom where Stephen’s smooth white cot stood by his parents’ bed, into Henry’s little dormer-windowed cubbyhole⁠—there! Henry had left his shoes in the middle of the floor again!⁠—into Helen’s room where a great bias fold in the badly made bed deepened the line between her eyes. + 

Still no Stephen. It was too much. With all she had to do, slaving day and night to keep the house nice for them all who never thought of appreciating it, never any rest or change, her hair getting thinner all the time, simply coming out by handfuls, and she had had such beautiful hair, so many things to do this afternoon while Mattie was out, enjoying herself, riding in a new car, and now everything stopped because of this naughty trick of Stephen’s of not answering. + 

“Stephen!” she screamed, her face darkly flushed. “Tell me where you are this minute!” + 

In that tiny house he must be quite within earshot. + 

But the tiny house sent back not the faintest murmur of response. The echo of her screaming voice died away to a dead silence that closed in on her menacingly and laid on her feverish, angry heart the cold touch of terror. + 

Suppose that Stephen were not hiding from her! Suppose he had stepped out into the yard a moment and had been carried away. There had been those rough-looking men loitering in the streets yesterday⁠—tramps from the railroad yards.⁠ ⁠… Oh, and the railroad yards so close! Mrs. Elmore’s little Harry killed there by a freight-train. Or the river! Standing there in the dark upper hall, she saw Stephen’s little hands clutching wildly at nothing and going down under that dreadful, cold, brown water. Stephen, her baby, her darling, the strongest and brightest of them all, her favorite.⁠ ⁠… + 

She flew down the stairs and out the front door into the icy February air, calling wildly: “Stephen! Stevie! Stevie, darling!” + 

But the dingy street was quite empty save for a grocer’s wagon standing in front of one of the little clapboarded houses. She ran down to this and asked the boy driving it: “Have you seen Stephen since you turned into the street? You know, little Stephen Knapp?” + 

“No, I ain’t seen him,” said the boy, looking up and down the street with her. + 

A thin old woman came out on the front porch of the house next to the Knapp’s. + 

“You haven’t seen Stephen, have you, Mrs. Anderson?” called Stephen’s mother. + 

“No, I haven’t see him, Mrs. Knapp. I don’t believe he’d go out this cold day. He’s just hiding on you somewhere. Children will do that, if you let them. If he were my child, Mrs. Knapp, I’d cure him of that trick before he so much as started it⁠—by the shingle method too! I never used to let my children get ahead of me. Once you let them get the start on you with some.⁠ ⁠…” + 

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. + 

But there was no Stephen in the house. He must have gone out! Even if he were safe, he would be chilled to the bone by this time! And suppose he were not safe! If only they didn’t live in such an abominable part of the town, so near the railroad yards and the slums! Her anger dropped away. She forgot the barb planted in her vanity by old Mrs. Anderson. As she flung on her wraps, she was shivering from head to foot; she was nothing but loving, suffering, fearing motherhood. If she had seen her Stephen struggling in the arms of a dozen big hoodlums, she would have flown at them like a tigress, armed only with teeth and claws and her passionate heart. + 

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. + 

II + 

When Mother was scrubbing a floor was always a good time for Stephen. She forgot all about you for a while. Oh, what a weight fell off from your shoulders when Mother forgot about you for a while! How perfectly lovely it was just to walk around in the bedroom and know she wouldn’t come to the door any minute and look at you hard and say, “What are you doing, Stephen?” and add, “How did you get your rompers so dirty?” + 

Stephen stepped about and about in the room, silently, drawing long breaths. The bed, the floor, the bureau, everything looked different to you in the times when Mother forgot about you for a minute. It occurred to Stephen that maybe it was a rest to them, too, to have Mother forget about them and stop dusting and polishing and pushing them around. They looked sort of peaceful, the way he felt. He nodded his head to the bed and looked with sympathy at the bureau. + 

The lower drawer was a little open. There was something white showing.⁠ ⁠… Mother didn’t allow you to open her bureau drawers, but that looked like⁠ ⁠… it was! He pulled the drawer open and snatched out his Teddy-bear⁠ ⁠… his dear, dear Teddy-bear. So that was where she had hidden it! + 

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. + 

The little boy sat on the floor of the quiet room, surrounded by the quiet furniture, resting itself visibly, and hugged his recovered treasure tightly to him, his round cheek pressed hard against the dingy white wool of the stuffed muzzle. He loved Teddy! He loved his Teddy! He was lost in unfathomable peace to have found him again. All the associations of tranquillity, the only tranquillity in Stephen’s life, which had accumulated about Teddy, rose in impalpable clouds about the child. What the smell of incense and the murmur of prayers are to the believer, what the first whiffs of his pipe to the dog-tired woodsman, what a green-shaded lamp over a quiet study table to the scholar, all that and more was Teddy to Stephen. His energetic, pugnacious little face grew dreamy, his eyes wide and gentle. For a moment not only had Mother forgotten about him, but he had forgotten about Mother. + 

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.” + 

She held up the dreadful remains, by one limp, lumpy arm, and both the mothers looked at it with interest and approval. Stephen’s horror had been unspeakable. If Mother did that to his Teddy⁠ ⁠… his Teddy who was like a part of himself.⁠ ⁠… The fierce fighting look had come into Stephen’s eyes and under the soft curves of rounded baby flesh he set his jaw. + 

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. + 

But now he had found Teddy, held him again in his arms that had ached for emptiness these three nights past. Stephen’s hot little warrior’s heart softened to love and quiet as he sat there; and presently there came to his calmer mind the plan to go to tell Mother about it. If he told her about it, maybe she wouldn’t take Teddy away and spoil him. + 

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. + 

II + 

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?” + 

“She said it was fine!” said the little girl eagerly. “She read it out to the class. She said maybe they’d get me to write the play for the entertainment our class is going to give, a history play, you know, something that would bring in Indians and the early settlers and the hiding regicides and what we’ve been studying. I wanted to ask you if you thought I could start it inside one of the houses, the night of an Indian attack, everybody loading muskets and barring the shutters and things, and the old hidden regicide looking out through a crack to see where the Indians were.” + 

“Oh, that would be great!” cried Henry admiringly, craning his neck around his father to listen. “What’s a regicide?” Henry was three grades behind Helen in school and hadn’t begun on history. His father and sister explained to him, both talking at once. And then they laughed to hear their words clashing together. They swung along rapidly, talking, laughing, interrupting each other, Henry constantly asking questions, the other two developing the imaginary scene, thrilling at the imaginary danger, loading imaginary muskets, their voices chiming out like bells in the cold evening air. Once in a while, Henry, who was small for his age, gave a little animated hop and skip to keep up with the others. + 

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. + 

They entered the shop and found Aunt Mattie Farnham there, buying ginger cookies and potato salad and boiled ham. “My! I’m ashamed to have you Knapps catch me at this!” she protested with that Aunt Mattieish laugh of hers that meant that she wasn’t really ashamed, or anything but cheerfully ready to make fun of herself. “It’s not Evangeline Knapp who’d be buying delicatessen stuff for her family’s supper at six o’clock at night! We went out in the new Buick this afternoon.⁠ ⁠… Oh, Lester, she’s a dream, simply a dream! And we went further than we meant. You always do, you know. And of course, being me, there’s not a thing in the house to eat. I put Frank and the children to setting the table while I tore over here. Don’t you tell Evangeline on me, Lester. I tried to get her to go and take Stephen, but she wouldn’t⁠—had biscuits to make for supper and a floor to scrub or something. She never lets things go, as I do. She’s a perfect wonder, Evangeline is, anyhow. An example to us all, I always tell ’em. After I’ve been in your house, I declare, I’m ashamed to set foot in my own!” + 

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.” + 

Aunt Mattie was lost in admiration. She turned Helen around to get the effect of the back. “Well, your mother is the wonder!” she cried heartily, again. “I never saw anybody to beat her for style! Give Evangeline Knapp a gunny sack and a horse-blanket and she’ll turn you out a fifty-dollar coat, I always tell ’em. Would anybody but her have dreamed of using that blue and light green together? It makes it look positively as if it came right from Fifth Avenue. I don’t dare buy me a new hat or a suit unless Evangeline says it’s all right. You can’t fool her on style! What did you ever do, Lester Knapp, to deserve such a wife, I’d like to know.” + 

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 (Stephen had disappeared). 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 washbasin 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 today, then?” asked Mr. Knapp in a cheerful voice, looking over at the erect, well-coifed housemother. + 

“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 saltcellar.” 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?” + 

Helen looked up quickly with a silent, amused smile. Her eyes met her father’s with understanding mirth. + 

“Take smaller mouthfuls, Stephen,” said Mrs. Knapp. + 

Nobody said a word, made a comment, least of all her husband, but she went on with some heat as if in answer to an unspoken criticism. “I know I keep at the children all the time! But how can I help it? They’ve got to learn, haven’t they? It certainly is no pleasure to me to do it! Somebody’s got to bring them up.” + 

The others quailed in silent remorse before this arraignment. Not so Stephen. He paid no attention whatever to it. His mother often said bitterly that he paid no attention to anything a grownup said unless you screamed at him and stamped your foot. + 

“Gimme some more meat,” he said heartily, pushing his plate towards his father. + 

“Say, ‘Please, Father,’ ” commanded his mother. + 

He looked blackly at her, longingly at the steak, decided that the occasion was not worth a battle and said, “Please, father,” in a tone which he contrived, with no difficulty whatever, to make insulting. + 

His mother’s worn, restrained face took on a deeper shade of disheartenment, but she did not lift the cast-down glove, and the provocative accent of rebellion continued to echo in the room triumphant and unchecked. It did not seem to increase the appetite of the other children. They kept their eyes cast down and made themselves small in their chairs. + 

It had no effect on Stephen’s enjoyment of his meal. He ate heartily, like a robust lumberman who has been battling with the elements all day and knows he must fortify himself for a continuation of the same struggle tomorrow. The mottled spots on his cheeks blended into his usual healthy red. He stopped eating for a moment to take a long and audible draught out of his mug. + 

“Don’t make a noise when you drink your milk,” said his mother. + 

The others ate lightly, sipping at their chocolate, taking tiny mouthfuls of the steak and potatoes. + 

“Helen’s school composition had quite a success,” said Helen’s father. “They are going to have some dramatics at the school and.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“What are dramatics?” asked Henry. + 

“Oh, that’s the general name for plays, comedies, you know, and tragedies and.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“What is a comedy?” asked Henry. “What is a tragedy?” + 

“Good Heavens, Henry,” said his father, laughingly, “I never saw anybody in my life who could ask as many questions as you. You wear the life out of me!” + 

“He doesn’t bother me with them,” said his mother, her inflection presenting the statement as a proof of her superior merit. + 

Henry shrank a little smaller. His father hastened to explain what a tragedy was and what a comedy was. Another silence fell. Then, “Quite cold today,” said Mr. Knapp. “The boys at the office said that the thermometer.⁠ ⁠…” He had tried to stop himself the moment the word “office” was out of his mouth. But it was too late. He stuck fast at “thermometer,” for an instant and then, hurriedly as if quite aware that no one cared how he finished the sentence, he added, “stood at only ten above this morning.” + 

Mrs. Knapp had glanced up sharply at the word “office” and her eyes had darkened at the pause afterwards. She was looking hard at her husband now, as if his hesitation, as if his accent had told her something. “Young Mr. Willing didn’t get back today, did he?” she asked gravely. + 

Mr. Knapp took a long drink of his hot chocolate. “Yes, he did,” he said at last, setting down his cup and looking humbly at his wife. + 

“Did they announce the reorganization⁠ ⁠… the way he’s going to.⁠ ⁠…” asked Mrs. Knapp. As if she did not know the answer already! + 

They both already knew everything that was to be asked and answered, but there seemed no escape from going on. + 

“Yes, they did,” said Mr. Knapp, trying to chew on a mouthful of steak. + 

“Who did they put in charge of your office?” asked Mrs. Knapp, adding in an aside, “Helen, don’t hold your fork like that.” + 

“Harvey Bronson,” said Mr. Knapp, trying to make it sound like any other name. + 

“Oh,” said Mrs. Knapp. + 

She made no comment on the news. She made it a point never to criticize their father before the children. + 

Helen’s eyes went over timidly towards her father, sideways under lowered lids. She wished she dared give him a loving look of reassurance to show him how dearly she loved him and sympathized with him because he had not had the advancement they had all hoped for so long, because a younger man and one who was especially mean to Father had been put over his head. Her heart swelled and ached. She would get Father off in a corner after dinner and give him a big silent hug. He would understand. + 

But as it happened, she did not. Other things happened. + 

There was almost total silence during the rest of the meal. Mrs. Knapp did not eat another mouthful of food after her husband’s news. The others made a pretense of cutting up food and swallowing it. Helen and Henry cleared off the table and brought in the dessert. + 

“Be careful about holding the meat-platter straight, Henry,” cautioned his mother. “I scrubbed on those last grease spots till nearly five o’clock this afternoon. It makes it very hard for Mother when you and Helen are careless.” Her voice was carefully restrained. + 

“How is your eczema, tonight, Eva?” asked her husband. + 

“Oh, about the same,” she said. She served out the golden preserved peaches, passed the homemade cake, but took none herself. After sitting for a few moments, she pushed back her chair and said: “I don’t care for any dessert tonight. I’ll just go and start on the dishes. You can come out to help when you finish eating.” + 

Her husband looked up at her, his face pale and shadowed. He tried to catch her eyes. But she averted them, and without a glance at him walked steadily out into the kitchen. + 

Her presence was still as heavy in the room as though she sat there, brooding over them. They conscientiously tried to eat. They did not look at each other. + 

They heard her begin to pile up the dishes at the sink, working rapidly as she always did. They heard her step swiftly back towards the kitchen table as though to pick up a dish there. They heard her stop short with appalling abruptness; and for a long moment a silence filled the little house, roaring loudly in their ears as they gazed at each other, across the table. What could have happened? + 

And then, with the effect of a clap of thunder shaking them to the bone, came a sudden rending outburst of sobs, strangled weeping, the terrifying sounds of an hysteric breakdown. + 

They rushed out into the kitchen. Mrs. Knapp stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, both hands pressed over her face, trying in vain to restrain the tears which rained down through her fingers, the sobs which convulsed her tall, strong body. From her feet to the dining-room door stretched a fresh line of grease spots. Henry had once more tilted the meat-platter as he carried it. + 

She heard them come in; she gave a muffled inarticulate cry, half pronounced words they could not understand, and, rushing past them, still shaking with sobs, she ran upstairs to her room. They heard the door shut, the click of the latch loud and distinct in the silent house. + 

“I want another help of peaches,” said Stephen greedily, taking instant advantage of his mother’s absence. “I like peaches.” + 

His father thought sometimes that Stephen was like the traditional changeling, hard, heartless, inhuman. + 

Henry’s face had turned very white. He stood looking dully at his father and sister, his lips hanging half-open. He turned from white to a yellow-green, and a shudder shook him. He whispered hastily, thickly, unintelligibly (but they understood because they had seen those signs many times before), he murmured, his hand clapped over his mouth, his shoulders bowed, “… ’mfraid goin’ be sick,” and ran upstairs to the bathroom. + 

They followed and found him vomiting, leaning over the bowl, his legs bending and trembling under him. His father put one arm around the thin little body and held his head clumsily with the other hand. Helen stood by, helplessly sympathetic. Henry looked so awfully sick when he had those fits of nausea! + 

Henry vomited apologetically, as it were, trying feebly not to spatter any of the ill-smelling liquid on the bathroom wall or floor. In an instant’s pause between spasms he rolled his eyes appealingly at Helen, who sprang to his side. + 

“… ’mfraid got shome shstairs,” he said thickly, the words cut short by another agonizing fit of retching. + 

Helen darted away. Her father called her back. “What is it? What did Henry say?” he asked anxiously. “I’ll get him his medicine as soon as he is over this. I don’t believe you can reach it. It’s on that highest shelf.” Helen stood up on tiptoe and whispered in her father’s ear, “He said he was afraid he got some on the stairs, and I’m going to wipe it up.” + 

Her father nodded his instant understanding. The little girl flew to the corner closet where the cleaning cloths were hung and disappeared down the stairs. + 

The door to the bedroom opened and Mrs. Knapp appeared. Her eyes were still red, and her face very pale; but her expression was of strong, kind solicitude. She came straight into the bathroom where Henry stood, half-fainting, wavering from side to side. + 

“Oh, poor Henry!” she said. “Here, I’ll take care of him.” + 

Mr. Knapp stepped back, self-effacingly, and with relief. She picked the child up bodily in her strong arms and carried him into the bedroom where she laid him on the bed. In an instant she had whisked out a basin which she held ready with one hand. “Bring me a wet washcloth, cold,” she said to her husband, “and a glass of water.” When it came she wiped Henry’s lips clean, so that with a sigh of relief he closed his mouth; she held the glass to his lips, “Rinse out your mouth with this, dear. It’ll make you feel better.” When the next spasm came, she supported his forehead firmly, laying his head back on the pillow afterwards; and, sprinkling a little eau-de-cologne on a fresh handkerchief, she wiped the cold sweat from his face. + 

To lie down had relieved the strain on Henry. The eau-de-cologne had partly revived him. He began to look less ghastly; he began to feel less that this time he was really going to die. He drew strength consciously from his mother’s calm self-possession. Nobody could take care of you like Mother when there was something the matter with you, he thought. + 

Mother now turned to inspect the contents of the basin. “What ever can have upset Henry this time? I planned that supper specially for him, just the things he usually digests all right.” + 

A pause. Then, “What can those dark brown crumby lumps be?” she asked aloud. “We didn’t have anything like that for supper.” + 

Henry rolled his eyes at his father, and then closed them, weakly, helplessly. + 

His father said from the door, briefly, “We met Mattie when we were at Wertheimer’s and she gave each of the children a cookie.” + 

“Store cookies?” asked Henry’s mother, more with an exclamation point than a question. + 

“The regular ginger cookie⁠ ⁠… a small one,” said her husband. + 

“Oh,” said Mrs. Knapp. + 

Behind Mr. Knapp in the obscurity of the hall, Helen slipped shadow-like, silently as a little mouse, back towards the closet where the cleaning cloths were kept. Her father hoped she had remembered to rinse the cloth well. + 

Mrs. Knapp sat down by Henry. She laid her hand on his forehead and said, “Mother doesn’t want to be scolding you all the time, Henry, but you must try to remember not to eat things away from home. You know your digestion is very delicate and you know how Mother tries to have just the right things for you here. If I do that, give up everything I’d like to do to stay here and cook things for you, you ought to be able to remember, don’t you think, not to eat other things?” + 

Her tone was reasonable. Her logic was unanswerable. Henry shrank to even smaller dimensions as he lay helpless on the bed. + 

She did not say a word to his father about having allowed Henry to eat the cookie. She never criticized their father before the children. + 

She got up now and put a light warm blanket over Henry. “Do you suppose you could get Stephen to bed, Lester?” she asked, over her shoulder. After he had gone, she sat holding Henry’s cold little frog’s paw in her warm hands till his circulation was normal and then helped him undress and get to bed. + 

When she went down to the kitchen she found that Helen and her father had tried to finish the evening work. The dishes were washed and put away. Helen was rinsing out the wiping-cloths, and Lester was sweeping. The clock showed a quarter of nine. + 

She looked sharply at what Helen was doing and plunged towards her with a gesture of impatience. “Mercy, Helen, don’t be so backhanded!” she cried, snatching a dripping cloth from the child’s hands. “I’ve told you a thousand times you can’t wring the water out of anything if you hold it like that!” She wrung the cloths one after another, her practised fingers flying like those of a prestidigitator. “Like that!” she said reprovingly to Helen, shaking them out and hanging them up to dry. + 

Seeing in Helen’s face no sign of any increase of intelligence about wringing out dishcloths, but only her usual cowed fear of further criticism, she said in a tone of complete discouragement: + 

“Oh, well, never mind! You’d better get to bed now. I’ll be up to rub the turpentine and lard on your chest by the time you’re undressed.” As the child trod softly out of the kitchen she threw after her like a hand-grenade, “Don’t forget your teeth!” + 

To her husband she said, taking the broom out of his hand and looking critically back over the floor he had been sweeping, “Don’t wait for me, Lester. I’ve got to change the dressings on my arm before I go to bed.” + 

“Can’t I help you with that, dear?” asked her husband. + 

“No, thank you,” she said. “I can manage all right.” + 

As he went out she was reflecting with a satisfaction that burned like fire that she was not as other women who “took it out” on their families when things went wrong. She never made scenes, not even when she was almost frenzied with irritations. She never lost her self-control⁠—except of course once in a while with Stephen, and then never for more than an instant or two. Until the terrifying but really unavoidable breakdown of this evening, no one had ever seen her weep, heavy and poisonous as were the bitter tears she so frequently held back. She never forgot to say “thank you” and “please.” Her heart swelled with an angry sense of how far beyond criticism she was. Come what might she would do her duty to the uttermost. + 

She went up to Helen’s room, silently did the necessary things for her cold and kissed her good night, saying, “Do try to make your bed a little better, dear. There was a great fold across it today from one corner to the other.” + 

Then she went downstairs and stepped about the house, picking up odd things and putting them in place: her usual evening occupation. As she hung up Henry’s muffler which lay on the floor at the foot of the coatrack in the hall, her eyes fell on Helen’s coat. She looked at it with mingled pride and exasperation. There was not a woman of her acquaintance who could have taken those hopeless old materials and pieced and turned and fitted and made such a stylish little garment. She had always said to herself that no matter how poor they were, she would die before her little girl should feel humiliated for the lack of decent clothes. And yet⁠ ⁠… what a strange child Helen was! She had put on that coat as if it had been any coat, as if she didn’t realize what a toilsome effort her mother had made to secure it. But children didn’t realize the sacrifices you made for them. + 

She had a moment of complete relaxation and satisfaction as she dropped into a chair to feast her eyes on the sofa. What a success it was! Could anybody recognize it for the old wreck which had stood out in front of the junk-shop on River Street all winter! She had seen its lines through its ruin, had guessed at the fine wood under the many coats of dishonoring paint. Every inch of it had been recreated by her hand and brain and purpose. + 

How sweet of Mattie Farnham to give her that striped velours to cover it with. She never could have afforded anything so fine. What lovely, lovely stuff it was! How she loved beautiful fabrics. Her face softened to dreaminess as she passed her hand gently over the smoothly drawn material and thought with affection of the donor. What a good-hearted girl Mattie was. + 

Her children would not have recognized her face as she sat there loving the sofa and the rich fabric on it and thinking gratefully of her friend. + 

But how funny Mattie was about dressing herself! Was there anybody who had less faculty for it? A flicker of amusement⁠—the first she had felt all day⁠—drew her lips into a good-natured smile at the recollection of that awful hat with the pink feather which Mattie had wanted to buy. What a figure of fun she had looked in it! And she knew it! And yet was hypnotized by the dowdy thing. All she had needed was the hint to take the small, dark-blue one that suited her perfectly. How queer she couldn’t think of it herself. + 

She loved to go shopping with Mattie⁠—with old Mrs. Anderson, with any of the ladies in the Guild who so often asked her advice. It was a real pleasure to help them select the right things. But⁠—her softened face tightened and set⁠—how horribly naughty Stephen was when you tried to take him into shops. Such disgraceful scenes as she had had with him when he got tired and impatient. + 

The clock behind her struck half-past nine, and she became aware of its ticking once more, its insistent whisper: “So much to do! So much to do! So much to do!” + 

She was very tired and found she had relaxed wearily into her chair. But she got up with a brisk energetic motion like a prizefighter coming out of his corner. She detested people who moved languidly and dragged themselves around. + 

She went into the kitchen and put the oatmeal into the fireless cooker, and after this waited, polishing absentmindedly the nickel towel-bar of the shining stove, till she heard Lester go out of the bathroom. + 

Then she went swiftly up the stairs, locked the bathroom door behind her, and began to unwind the bandages from around her upper arm. When it finally came off she inspected the raw patch on her arm. It was crusted over in places, with thick, yellowish-white pus oozing from the pustules. It was spreading. It was worse. It would never be any better. It was like everything else. + 

She spread a salve on it with practised fingers, wound a fresh bandage about her arm, fastened it firmly and then washed her hands over and over, scrubbing them mercilessly with a stiff brush till they were raw. She always felt unclean to her bones after she had seen one of those frequently recurring eczema eruptions on her skin. She never spoke of them unless someone asked her a question about her health. She felt disgraced by their loathsomeness, although no one but she and the doctor ever saw them. She often called it to herself, “the last straw.” + 

Her nightgown hung on the bathroom door. They usually dressed and undressed here not to disturb Stephen who still slept in their bedroom, because there was no other corner in the little house for him. And now they would never be able to move to a larger house where they could live decently and have a room apiece, to a better part of town where the children would have decent playmates. Never anything but this.⁠ ⁠… + 

She began to undress rapidly and to wash. As she combed her dark hair, she noticed again how rapidly it was falling. The comb was full of long hairs. She took them out and rolled them up into a coil. She supposed she ought to save her combings to make a switch against the inevitable time when her hair would be too thin to do up. And she had had such beautiful hair! It had been her one physical superiority, that and her “style.” What good had they ever done her! + 

She began to think of the frightening moment in the kitchen that evening, when for an instant she had lost her bitterly fought-for self-control, when the taut cable of her willpower had snapped under the strain put upon it. For a wild instant she had been all one inner clamor to die, to die, to lay down the heavy, heavy burden, too great for her to bear. What was her life? A hateful round of housework, which, hurry as she might, was never done. How she loathed housework! The sight of a dishpan full of dishes made her feel like screaming out. And what else did she have? Loneliness; never-ending monotony; blank, gray days, one after another, full of drudgery. No rest from the constant friction over the children’s carelessness and forgetfulness and childishness! How she hated childishness! And she must try to endure it patiently or at least with the appearance of patience. Sometimes, in black moments like this, it seemed to her that she had such strange children, not like other people’s, easy to understand and manage, strong, normal children. Helen⁠ ⁠… there didn’t seem to be anything to Helen! With the exasperation which passivity always aroused in her, Helen’s mother thought of the dumb vacant look on Helen’s face that evening when she had tried to show her how to perform a simple operation a little less clumsily. Sometimes it seemed as though Helen were not all there! And Henry with that nervous habit of questioning everything everybody said and the absentmindedness which made him do such idiotic things.⁠ ⁠… + 

A profound depression came upon her. These were the moments in a mother’s life about which nobody ever warned you, about which everybody kept a deceitful silence, the fine books and the speakers who had so much to say about the sacredness of maternity. They never told you that there were moments of arid clear sight when you saw helplessly that your children would never measure up to your standard, never would be really close to you, because they were not your kind of human beings, because they were not your children, but merely other human beings for whom you were responsible. How solitary it made you feel! + 

And Stephen.⁠ ⁠… + 

It frightened her to think of Stephen. What could you do for a child who wanted to be bad, and told you so in a loud scream? How could you manage a child whom no arguments touched, who went off like a dynamite bomb over everything and nothing; who was capable of doing as he did this afternoon, rushing right at his own mother in a passion, trying to bite and scratch and tear her flesh like a little wild beast? + 

And yet she had never spoiled Stephen because he was the baby of the family. She had always been firm with him just as she had with the others. Everyone in her circle agreed that she had never spoiled him. What future could there be for Stephen? If he was like this at five, what would he be at fifteen, with all those slum boys at hand to play with? She couldn’t always keep them away from him. + 

If they could only move to another part of town, the nice part, where the children would have nice playmates! But now she knew they never would. With this last complete failure of poor Lester’s to make good, she touched bottom, knew hopelessness. There never would be anything else for her, never, never! How could Lester take things lying down as he did! When there were all those tragic reasons for his forging ahead? Why didn’t he do as other men did, all other men who amounted to anything, even common laboring men⁠—get on, succeed, provide for his family! + 

It was not lack of intelligence or education. He had always been crazy about books and education. What good did Lester’s intelligence and education do them? It was just that he didn’t care enough about them to try! + 

Well, she would never complain. She despised wives who complained of their husbands. She had never said a word against Lester and she never would. Even tonight, at the table, struck down as she had been by that blow, that fatal blow, so casually, so indifferently announced, she had not breathed a word of blame. Not one! + 

But it was bitter! Bitter! She was fit for something better than scrubbing floors all her life. Her dark face in the mirror looked out at her, blazing. She looked as Stephen did when he was being whipped. She looked wicked. She felt wicked. But she did not want to be wicked. She wanted to be a good Christian woman. She wanted to do her duty. She began to pray, fervently, “O God, help me bear my burdens! God, make me strong to do my duty! God, take out the wild, sinful anger from my heart and give me patience to do what I must do! O God, help me to be a good mother!” + 

The right spring had been touched. Her children! She must live for her children. And she loved them, she did live for them! What were those little passing moments of exasperation! Nothing, compared to the passion for them which shook her like a great wind, whenever they were sick, whenever she felt how greatly they needed her. And how they did need her! Helen, with her delicate lungs, her impracticality, her helplessness⁠—what could she do without her mother to take care of her? And Stephen⁠—she shuddered to think of the rage into which some women would fly when Stephen was in one of his bad moods. Nobody but his own mother could be trusted to resist the white heat of anger which his furies aroused in the person trying to care for him. And Henry, poor little darling Henry! Who else would take the trouble, day by day, to provide just the right food for him? See what that one cookie had done to him this evening! Why, if Mattie Farnham had the care of that child, she and her delicatessen-store stuff.⁠ ⁠… + 

Henry’s mother swiftly braided up her thinning hair. Her face was calmer. She was planning what she would give him for lunch the next day. + 

III + 

“Don’t you want to sit by the window here, Mrs. Farnham?” suggested Mrs. Prouty, the rector’s wife. “The light’ll be better for your sewing. That dark material is hard on the eyes.” + 

All the Ladies’ Guild understood that Mrs. Farnham was being posted there to give the alarm when Mrs. Knapp turned into the walk leading to the Parish House, and they went on talking with an agreeable sense of security. + 

“It’s pretty hard on those Willing’s Emporium people, I say,” Mrs. Prouty remarked, “after years of faithful service, to have everything turned topsy-turvy over their heads by a young whippersnapper. They say he’s going to change the store all around too; put the Ladies’ Cloak Department upstairs where the shoes always were; and he’s taken that top floor that old Mr. Willing rented to the Knights of Pythias and is going to add some new departments. A body won’t know where to find a thing! In my opinion he’ll live to regret it.” + 

They all reflected silently that if the young Mr. Willing had only been an Episcopalian like his defunct uncle, instead of a Presbyterian, Mrs. Prouty might not have taken the change of the Ladies’ Cloak Department quite so hard. + 

“Poor Mrs. Knapp feels simply terrible about her husband’s not being promoted,” said Mrs. Merritt, the doctor’s wife. “I saw her yesterday at Wertheimer’s for an instant. Not that she said anything. She wouldn’t, you know, not if she died for it. But you could feel it. All over her. And no wonder!” + 

“Poor thing!” (Mrs. Prouty had acquired the full, solicitous intonation of the parish visitor.) “She has many burdens to bear. Mr. Prouty often says that in these days it is wonderful to see a woman so devoted to her duty as a homemaker. She simply gives up her whole life to her family! Absolutely!” + 

“The children are such delicate little things, too, a constant care.” Mrs. Merritt snatched the opportunity to display her inside information. “There’s hardly a week that Doctor isn’t called in there for one or another of them. He often tells me that he doesn’t know what to do for them. They don’t seem to have anything to do with! No digestions, no constitutions. Just like their father. All but little Stephen. He’s strong enough!” + 

“He’s a perfect imp of darkness!” cried old Mrs. Anderson, lifting her thin gray face from her sewing. “I’ve raised a lot of children in my day and seen a lot more, but I never saw such a naughty contrary child as he is in all my born days. Nor so hateful! He never does anything unless it’s to plague somebody by it. The other day, in the last thaw it was, I’d just got my back porch mopped up after the grocer’s boy⁠—you know how he tracks mud in⁠—and I heard somebody fussing around out there, and I opened the door quick, and there was Stephen Knapp lugging over a great pail of mud to dump it on my porch. He’d dumped one already and got it all spread out on the boards. I said, ‘Why, Stephen Knapp, what makes you do such a bad thing?’ I was really paralyzed to see him at it. ‘What makes you be so bad, Stephen?’ I said. And he said⁠—he’s got the hardest, coolest way of saying those wicked things⁠—he said, as cool as you please, ‘ ’Tause I hate you, Mis’ Anderson, ’tause I hate you.’ And gave me that black look of his.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Through the tepid, stagnant air of the room flickered a sulphurous zigzag of passion. The women shrank back from it, horrified and fascinated. + 

“Mr. Prouty says,” quoted his wife, “that Stephen Knapp makes him think of the old Bible stories about people possessed of the devil. His mother is at her wit’s end. Mr. Prouty says she has asked him to help her with prayer. And Stephen gets worse all the time. And yet she’s always perfectly firm with him, never spoils him. And it’s wonderful, her iron self-control when he is in one of his tempers. I never could keep my temper like that. It can’t be due to anything about the way she manages him, for she never had a particle of trouble with the other two. Well, it’ll be a great relief to her, as she often says, when he goes to school with the others.” + 

Mrs. Merritt now said, lowering her voice, “You know she has a chronic skin trouble too that she never says anything about.” + 

“Like St. Paul, Mr. Prouty says.” + 

“Doctor has tried everything to cure it. Diet. Electricity. X-rays. All the salves in the drugstores. Oh, no,” she explained hastily in answer to an unspoken thought somewhere in the room. “Oh, no, it’s nothing horrid! Her husband is a nice enough man, as far as that goes. Doctor thinks it may be nervous, may be due to.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Nervous!” cried Mrs. Mattie Farnham. “Why, it’s a real eruption, discharging pus and everything. I had to help her dress a place on her back once when Stephen was a tiny baby. Nervous!” + 

“Oh, Doctor doesn’t mean it is anything she could help. He often says that just because you’ve called a thing nervous is no reason for thinking it’s not serious. It’s as real to them, he says, as a broken leg.” + 

“Well, I’d have something worse than eczema if I had three delicate children to bring up and only that broken reed of a Lester Knapp to lean on,” said Mrs. Prouty with energy. “They tell me that he all but lost his job in the shakeup at Willing’s⁠—let alone not getting advanced. Young Mrs. Willing told Mr. Prouty that her husband told her that he’d be blessed if he knew anything Lester Knapp would be good for⁠—unless teaching poetry, maybe. Young Mrs. Willing is a Churchwoman, you know. It’s only her husband who is a Presbyterian. That’s how she happened to be talking to Mr. Prouty. She was telling him that if it depended on her which church.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“He’s a nice man, Lester Knapp is,” broke in Mrs. Farnham stoutly. “You know we’re sort of related. His sister married my husband’s brother. The children call me Aunt. When you come to know Lester he’s a real nice man. And he’s a smart man too, in his way. When he was at the State University he was considered one of the best students there, I’ve always heard ’em say. If he hadn’t married so young, he was lotting on being.⁠ ⁠…” Her tone changed suddenly⁠—“Oh, Mrs. Merritt, do you think I ought to hem this or face it?” + 

“It’d be pretty bungling to hem, wouldn’t it?” Mrs. Merritt responded on the same note, “such heavy material⁠—to turn in the hem, anyhow. Maybe you could feather-stitch it down⁠—oh, how do you do, Mrs. Knapp? So glad to see you out. But then you’re one of the faithful ones, as Mr. Prouty always says.” + 

They all looked up from their work, smiling earnestly at her, drawing their needles in and out rapidly, and Evangeline Knapp knew from the expression of their eyes that they had been talking of her, of Lester’s failure to make good; that they had been pitying her from their superior position of women whose husbands were good providers. + 

She resented their pity⁠—and yet it was a comfort to her. She loved coming to these weekly meetings of the Guild, the only outings of her life, and always went home refreshed and strengthened by her contact with people who looked at things as she did. She passed her life in solitary confinement, as homemakers always do, with a man who naturally looked at things from a man’s standpoint (and in her case from a very queer standpoint of his own) and with children who could not in the nature of things share a single interest of hers; it was an inexpressible relief to her to have these weekly glimpses of human beings who talked of things she liked, who had her standards and desires. + 

She liked women, anyhow, and had the deepest sympathy for their struggle to arrange in a decent pattern the crude masculine and crude childish raw material of their home-lives. She liked too the respect of these women for her, the way they all asked her advice, and saved up perplexities for her to solve. Today, for instance, she had scarcely taken out her thimble when Mrs. Prouty passed over a sample of blue material to ask whether it was really linen as claimed⁠—when anybody with an eye in her head could see that it was not even a very good imitation. After that, Mrs. Merritt said she had noticed that Paisley effects were coming in. Would it be possible to drape one of those old shawls⁠—she had a lovely one from her grandmother⁠—to make a cloak⁠—to simulate the wide-sleeved effect⁠—without cutting it, you know⁠—of course you wouldn’t want to cut it! + 

Mrs. Knapp said she would think it over, and as she rapidly basted the collar on the child’s dress she was making, she concentrated her inner vision on the problem. She saw it as though it were there⁠—the great square of richly patterned fabric. She draped it in imagination this way and that. No, that would be too bungling at the neck⁠—perhaps drawn up in the middle.⁠ ⁠… + 

They felt her absorption and preserved a respectful silence, sewing and glancing up occasionally at her inward-looking face to see how she was progressing. Their own minds were quite relaxed and vacant. Mrs. Knapp had taken up the problem. What need for anyone else to think of it? They had such confidence in Mrs. Knapp. + 

Presently, “I believe you could do it this way, Mrs. Merritt,” she said. “Mrs. Anderson, hand me that piece of sateen, will you, please. See, this is your shawl. You make a fold in the middle, so, halfway up⁠—and catch it between with a.⁠ ⁠…” They laid down their work to give their whole attention to her explanation, their eyes following her fingers, their minds accepting her conclusions without question. + 

She felt very happy, very warm, very kind. She loved being able to help Mrs. Merritt out this way. Dr. Merritt was such a splendid doctor and so good always to Henry and Helen. And she loved helping somebody to make use of something, to rescue something fine, as she had rescued the sofa. It would be a beautiful, beautiful cloak, especially with Mrs. Merritt’s mink neckpiece made over into a collar, a detail that came into her mind like an inspiration as she talked. + 

Yes, she was very happy the afternoons when the Guild met. + 

Mr. Prouty usually brought his rosy-gilled face and round collar into the Guild Room before the group broke up and chatted with the ladies over the cup of tea which ended their meetings. He had something on his mind today⁠—that was evident to every one of those married women the instant he stepped into the room. But he did not bring it out at once, making pleasant conversation with the preoccupied dexterity of an elderly clergyman. As he talked, he looked often at Mrs. Knapp’s dark intense face, bent over her work. She never stopped for tea. And when he said in his well-known, colloquial, facetious way, “Ladies, I’ve got a big job for you. Take a brace. I’m going to shoot!” it was towards Mrs. Knapp that he spoke. + 

He tried to address himself to them all equally as he made his appeal, but unconsciously he turned almost constantly to the keen attentive eyes which never left his for an instant as he talked. He spoke earnestly, partly because he feared lest the Presbyterians might steal a march on him, and partly because of a very real sympathy with the wretched children whose needs he was describing. When he finished, they all waited for Mrs. Knapp to speak. + 

She said firmly, “There’s just one thing to do. A good visiting nurse attached to our parish work is the only way we could get anywhere. Anything else⁠—baskets of food, volunteer visiting⁠—they never amount to a row of pins.” + 

The feeble, amateur, fumbling plans which they were beginning to formulate fell to earth. But they were aghast at her. + 

“A nurse! How ever could we get the money to pay one?” + 

“Only big-city parishes can hope to.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“We could if we tried!” she said, quelling them by her accent. She looked around at them with burning eyes. She was like a falcon in a barnyard. “A visiting nurse would cost⁠—let us say a thousand a year.” + 

“Oh, more than that!” cried Mr. Prouty. + 

“Not if we supplied her with lodging and heat. Why couldn’t we arrange the little storeroom at the head of the stairs here in the Parish House for a bedroom for her? We could.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“How could you heat it? There’s no radiator there.” + 

“There’s a steam-riser goes through that room. I noticed it when we were putting the folding chairs away last week. That would make it warm enough. We could furnish it by contributions, without its costing a cent in cash. Everybody has at least one piece of furniture she could spare from her house⁠—in such a cause. About the pay, now. We have more than four hundred dollars in the Ladies’ Guild Treasury, and next Christmas our Bazaar ought to bring in two hundred more; it always does. We could hire Hunt’s Hall on Union Street for it, and have the bazaar bigger, and make more than two hundred easily. Then, there’s Miss Jelliffe, the music supervisor in the public schools, you know. Now that she’s joined St. Peter’s, I’m very sure she would help us get up some concerts later on. We could give ‘Songs of All Countries’ in costume, with the children. When you have lots of children in a program, you can always sell tickets. Their folks want to see them. And we could get a certain amount from the poor families the nurse visits⁠—perhaps enough to make up the rest of her salary. They’d appreciate the service more if they paid something for it. Folks do.” + 

All this had poured from her effortlessly, as if she had been simply pointing out what lay there to see, not as though she were beating her brains to invent it. + 

They gaped at her breathlessly. + 

“I wish you would be chairman of the Committee,” said Mr. Prouty deferentially, “and take charge of the campaign for funds.” + 

Her face which had been for an instant clear and open, clouded and shut. “I’d love to!” she said passionately. “I see it all!” She began to roll her sewing together as though to give herself time to be able to speak more calmly. “But I mustn’t think of it,” she said at last. “I have too much to do at home. It’s all I can manage to get to church and to Guild meeting once a week. I never leave the house for anything else except to go to market. I can take Stephen with me there. Of course, after he starts going to school.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Yes, they all knew what a relief it was when the children started going to school, and you could keep the house in some kind of order, and have a little peace. + 

Their silent, sympathetic understanding brought out from her now something she had not meant to say, something which had been like a lump of lead on her heart, the dread that her only open door, would soon close upon her. “Even for Guild-meetings,” she said, speaking grimly to keep her lips from trembling, “I may have to give them up, too. Mr. Knapp has always been able to make an arrangement to get away from the store an hour and a half earlier on Thursdays to stay with Stephen and the other two after school. But I don’t know whether he will be able to manage that now. Mr. Willing, I mean old Mr. Willing saw no objection. But now.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Her voice was harsh and dry; but they all knew why. And she was quite aware of the silent glosses and commentaries she knew them to be supplying mentally. She pinned her roll of sewing together firmly. Nobody could put in a pin with her gesture of mastery. “My first duty is to my home and children,” she said. + 

“Oh, yes, oh, yes, we all know that, of course.” Mr. Prouty gave to the aphorism a lip-service which scantily covered his bitter objection to it in this case. + 

“Our circumstances don’t permit us to hire help,” she added, making this resolutely a statement of fact and not a complaint. “I do the washings, you know.” + 

“I know. Wonderful! Wonderful!” said Mr. Prouty irritably. + 

“She sets an example to us all, I always tell ’em,” said Mrs. Farnham. + 

“Yes, indeed you do, Mrs. Knapp!” they all agreed fervently. Evangeline knew that this was their way of trying to make up to her for having a poor stick of a husband. She savored their compassion with a bittersweet mixture of humiliation over her need for it and of triumph that she had drawn this sympathy from them under the appearance of repelling it. “Nobody ever heard me complain!” she was saying to herself. + 

“Well, I’ll do what I can,” she said, standing up to go. “I’ll think of things. I’ve just thought of another. If we can provide the nurse with dinner every day, that ought to cut down on cash expenses. There are twenty-four members of the Guild. That’d hardly mean more than one dinner a month for each of us. And it would cut off fifteen dollars a month from the money we’d have to provide. And in that way we could keep in closer touch with her. Seeing her every day and hearing about her work, we’d be more apt to cooperate with her right along.” + 

“Splendid! Simply splendid!” cried Mr. Prouty. “We will be the only parish of our size in the State to have a visiting nurse of our own.” He saw himself at the next diocesan meeting the center of a group of envious clergymen, expounding to them the ingenious devices by which this remarkable result had been achieved. He had had a good deal of this sort of gratification since the Knapps had moved into his parish. + 

IV + 

“Who swoon in sleep and awake wearier.” + 

As he woke up, Lester Knapp heard the words in the air as he so often heard poetry, + 

“… and awake wearier!” + 

He was tired to the bone. He would have given anything in the world to turn over, bury his face in the pillow and swoon to sleep again. + 

And never wake up! + 

But the alarm-clock had rung, and Evangeline had risen instantly. He heard her splashing in the bathroom now. + 

With an effort as though he were struggling out of smothering black depths, he sat up and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. Gosh! How little good he seemed to get from his sleep. He was tireder when he woke up than when he went to bed. + 

On the cot opposite little Stephen lay sleeping as vigorously as he did everything, one tightly clenched small fist flung up on his pillow. What a strong, handsome kid he was. Whatever could be the matter with him to make him act so like the devil? Strange to see a little kid like that, so hateful, seem to take such a satisfaction in raising hell. + 

Well, there was the furnace fire to fix. He thrust his feet into slippers, put his dressing-gown over his pyjamas and shuffled downstairs, hearing behind him the firm, regular step of Evangeline as she went from the bathroom to the bedroom. On the way down he woke up enough to realize what made life look so specially intolerable that morning; the return of Jerome Willing and his own definite failure to make good in the new organization of the store. The significance of that and all that it foretold stood out more harshly than ever in the pale, dawn-gray of the cold empty kitchen. Oh, hell! + 

He flung open the cellar door and ran downstairs to run away from the thought. But it was waiting for him, blackly in the coal-bin, luridly in the firebox. + 

“It looks just about like the jumping-off place for me,” he thought, rattling the furnace-shaker gloomily; “only I can’t jump. Where to?” + 

Well, anyhow, in the few minutes before breakfast, while his stomach was empty, he was free from that dull leaden mass of misery turning over and over inside him at intervals, which was the usual accompaniment of his every waking hour. That was something to be thankful for. + 

He strained his lean arms to throw the coal from his shovel well back into the firebox, and leveled it evenly with the long poker. Evangeline always found time to go down to see if he had done it right before he got away after breakfast. + 

Then he stood for a moment, struck as he often was, by the leaping many-tongued fury of the little pale-blue pointed flames. He looked at them, fascinated by the baleful lustfulness of their attack on the helpless lumps of coal thrown into their inferno. + 

“The seat of desolation, void of light + 

Save what the glimmering of those livid flames + 

Casts, pale and dreadful. Yet from those flames + 

No light, but rather darkness visible, + 

Serves only to discover sights of woe.” + 

He heard the words crackle in the flames. He said to himself gravely: “Sights of woe it surely is.” + 

He heard Evangeline begin to rattle the shaker of the kitchen stove and started from his hypnotized stare at the flames. It was time for him to beat it back upstairs if he didn’t want to be late. How he loathed his lifelong slavery to the clock, that pervasive intimate negative opposed to every spontaneous impulse. “It’s the clock that is the naysayer to life,” he thought, as he climbed the cellar stairs. He hurried upstairs, dressed and began to shave. + 

In the midst of this last operation he heard lagging, soft little footsteps come into the bathroom behind him, and beyond his own lathered face in the glass he saw Stephen enter. Unconscious of observation, the little boy was gazing absently out of the window at the snow-covered branches of the maple tree. His father was so much surprised by the expression of that round baby face and so much interested in it that he stopped shaving, his razor in the air, peering at his little son through the glass darkly. Stephen was looking wistful! Yes, he was! Wistful and appealing! Wasn’t his lower lip quivering a little as though.⁠ ⁠… + 

Stephen caught his father’s eye on him and started in surprise at being seen by somebody whose back was towards him. + 

“Hello there, Stevie,” said his father in an inviting tone. “How’s the old man today?” + 

Yes, Stephen’s lower lip was quivering! He came closer now and stood looking up earnestly into the soapy face of his father. “Say, Father,” he began, “you know my Teddy-bear⁠—you know how.⁠ ⁠…” + 

From below came a clear, restrained voice stating dispassionately, “Lester, you have only twelve minutes before it’s time to leave the house.” And then rebukingly, “Stephen, you mustn’t bother Father in the mornings when he has to hurry so. Either go back to bed this minute and keep warm or get dressed at once. You’ll take cold standing around in your pyjamas.” + 

The tone was reasonable. The logic unanswerable. But unlike Henry, Stephen did not shrink to smaller proportions under the reason and the logic. With the first sound of his mother’s voice, his usual square-jawed, pugnacious little mask had dropped over his face. “I’ll get dwessed when I get a-good-a-weady!” he announced loudly and belligerently, refreshed by his night’s sleep and instantly ready to raise an issue and fight it out. + 

“Stephen!” came from below in awful tones. Stephen sauntered away back into the bedroom with ostentatious leisureliness, his face black and scowling. Mother had once more stolen Teddy away from him during the night. + 

Lester finished shaving in three or four swipes of his razor, put on his collar at top speed and tied his necktie as he ran downstairs, cursing the clock and all its works under his breath. Stephen had been on the point of saying something to him, something human, Stephen who never asked a question or made an advance towards anyone, Stephen who lived in a state of moral siege, making sorties from his stronghold only to harry the enemy. And the accursed matter of punctuality had once more frozen out a human relationship. He never had time to know his children, to stalk and catch that exquisitely elusive bird-of-paradise, their confidence. Lester had long ago given up any hope of having time enough to do other things that seemed worth while, to read the books he liked, to meditate, to try to understand anything. But it did seem that in the matter of his own children.⁠ ⁠… + 

“I didn’t think you’d need your overshoes this morning, Lester. I didn’t get them out. But if you think you would better.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Oh, no, no, dear, I won’t. I hate them anyhow.” + 

His breakfast, perfectly cooked and served, steamed on the white tablecloth. What a wonder of competence Eva was! Only it was a pity she let the children get on her nerves so. Lester never doubted that his wife loved her children with all the passion of her fiery heart, but there were times when it occurred to him that she did not like them very well⁠—not for long at a time, anyhow. But, like everything else, that was probably his fault, because she had all the drudgery of the care of them, because she never had a rest from them, because he had not been able to make money enough. Everything came back to that. + 

He gulped down his hot, clear coffee and tore at his well-made toast, thinking that he was just about a dead loss anyway you looked at it. Not only had he no money to give his children, but no health either. That was another reason why Eva was so worn and took life so hard. He had given her sickly children⁠—all but Stephen. And Stephen had other ways of wearing on his mother. Poor little Henry! How sick he had been last night! It was damnable that the poor kid should have inherited from his good-for-nothing father the curse of a weak digestion, which made life not worth living⁠—that and many other things. + 

He snatched his watch, relentless inquisitor, from the table beside his plate, thrust it into his pocket and jumped up to put on his overcoat and hat. + 

“Here are your gloves,” said his wife, holding them out to him. “There was a hole in the finger. I’ve just mended it.” + 

“Oh, that’s awfully good of you, Evie,” said Lester, kissing her cheek and feeling another ton of never-to-be-redeemed indebtedness flung on his shoulders. He felt them bend weakly under it like a candle in an overheated room. + 

“Don’t forget your soda-mints,” said Evangeline. + 

Gee! it wasn’t likely he would forget them, with that hideous demon of dull discomfort getting to work the instant he swallowed food. + 

Henry and Helen, half-dressed, came hurrying down the stairs to see him before he disappeared for the day. His heart yearned over them, their impressionable, delicate faces, their shadowed eyes, the shrinking carriage of their slim little bodies. + 

“Goodbye, Father,” they said, lifting their sweet children’s lips to his. The poor kids! What business had he to pass on the curse of existence to other human beings, too sensitive and frail to find it anything but a doom. He tried to say, “Goodbye there, young ones,” as he kissed them, but the words could not pass the knot in his throat. + 

He saw Eva start up the stairs and, knowing that she was going to have it out with Stephen, crammed his hat on his head and ran. But not fast enough. As he fled down the porch steps he heard a combative angry roar. Helen and Henry would eat their breakfast to a cheerful tune! And then another scream, more furious, on a higher note. Hell and damnation! There must be something wrong with the way that kid was treated to make life one perpetual warfare. But his father was as helpless to intervene as if he were bound and gagged. + 

Well, he was bound and gagged to complete helplessness about everything in his life and his children’s lives, bound and gagged by his inability to make money. Only men who made money had any right to say how things should go in their homes. A man who couldn’t make money had no rights of any kind which a white man was bound to respect⁠—nor a white woman either. Especially a white woman. The opinion of a man who couldn’t make money was of no value, on any subject, in anybody’s eyes. The dignity of a man who could not make money⁠—but why talk about nonexistent abstractions? He had about as much dignity left him as a zero with the rim off. + 

His after-breakfast dyspepsia began to roll crushingly over his personality as it always did for a couple of hours after each meal. His vitality began to ebb. He felt the familiar, terrible draining out of his will-to-live. At the thought of enduring this demoralizing torment that morning, and that afternoon, and the day after that and the day after that, he felt like flinging himself on the ground rolling and shrieking. Instead he pulled out his watch with the employee’s nervous gesture and quickened his pace. He was just then passing Dr. Merritt’s office. If only there was something the doctor could do to help him. But he’d tried everything. And anyhow, he understood perfectly that a man who doesn’t make money has no right to complain of dyspepsia⁠—of anything. Illness only adds to his guilt. + 

He put a soda-mint in his mouth, turned a corner and saw, down the street, the four-story brick front of Willing’s Emporium. Was it possible that a human being could hate anything as he hated that sight and not drop dead of it? Before this new phase it had been bad enough, all those years when it had been a stagnant pool of sour, slow intrigue and backbiting, carried on by sour, slow, small-minded people, all playing in their different ways on the small-minded, sick old man at the head of it. Lester had always felt that he would rather die than either join in those intrigues or combat them. This aloofness, added to his real incapacity for business, had left him still nailed to the same high stool in the same office which had received him the day he had first gone in. That first day when, vibrant with the excitement of his engagement to that flame-like girl, he had left his University classes and all his plans for the future and rushed out to find work, any work that would enable him to marry! Well, he had married. That had been only thirteen years ago! The time before it seemed to Lester as remote as the age of Rameses. + 

He had hated the slow regime of the sick, small-minded old man, but he hated still more this new regime which was anything but slow. He detested the very energy and forcefulness with which Jerome Willing was realizing his ideals, because he detested those ideals. Lester felt that he knew what those ideals were, what lay behind those “pep” talks to the employees. Jerome Willing’s notion of being a good businessman was to stalk the women of his region, as a hunter stalks unsuspecting game, to learn how to catch them unawares, and how to play for his own purposes on a weakness of theirs only too tragically exaggerated already, their love for buying things. Jerome Willing’s business ideal, as Lester saw it, was to seize on one of the lower human instincts, the desire for material possessions, to feed it, to inflame it, to stimulate it till it should take on the monstrous proportions of a universal monomania. A city full of women whose daily occupation would be buying things, and things, and more things yet (the things Jerome Willing had to sell, be it understood): that was Jerome Willing’s vision of good business. And to realize this vision he joyfully and zestfully bent all the very considerable powers of his well-developed personality. Lester Knapp, the barely tolerated clerk, hurrying humbly down the street to take up his small drudging task, gazed at that life-purpose as he had gazed at the lurid baleful energy of the coal-flames half an hour before. + 

Lester did not so much mind the way this subtly injected poison ate into the fibers of childless women. They might, for all he cared, let their insane hankering for a cloak with the “new sleeves” force them to put blood-money into buying it, and allow their drugged desire for such imbecile things to wall them in from the bright world of impersonal lasting satisfactions. They hurt nobody but themselves. If the Jerome Willings of the world were smart enough to make fools of them, so much the worse for them. Although the spectacle was hardly an enlivening one for a dyspeptic man forced to pass his life in contact with it. + 

But what sickened Lester was the unscrupulous exploitation of the homemaking necessity, the adroit perversion of the homemaking instinct. Jerome Willing wanted to make it appear, hammering in the idea with all the ingenious variations of his advertising copy, that homemaking had its beginning and end in good furniture, fine table linen, expensive rugs.⁠ ⁠… God! how about keeping alive some intellectual or spiritual passion in the home? How about the children? Did anybody suggest to women that they give to understanding their children a tenth part of the time and real intelligence and real purposefulness they put into getting the right clothes for them? A tenth? A hundredth! The living, miraculous, infinitely fragile fabric of the little human souls they lived with⁠—did they treat that with the care and deft-handed patience they gave to their filet-ornamented table linen? No, they wrung it out hard and hung it up to dry as they did their dishcloths. + 

And of course what Jerome Willing wanted of every employee was to join with all his heart in this conspiracy to force women still more helplessly into this slavery to possessions. Anyone who could trick a hapless woman into buying one more thing she had not dreamed of taking, he was the hero of the new regime! That was what Jerome Willing meant when he talked about “making good.” Making good what? Not good human beings! That was the last thing anybody was to think of. And as to trying to draw out from children any greatness of soul that might lie hidden under their immaturity.⁠ ⁠… + 

“You’re late again, Mr. Knapp,” said Harvey Bronson’s voice, rejoicing in the accusation. + 

Lester Knapp acknowledged his three-minute crime by a nervous start of astonishment and then by a fatigued nod of his head. All the swelling fabric of his thoughts fell in a sodden heap, amounting to nothing at all, as usual. He hung up his coat and hat and sat down on the same old stool. He was no good; that was the matter with him⁠—the whole matter. He was just no good at all⁠—for anything. What right had he to criticize anybody at all, when anybody at all amounted to more than he! He was a man who couldn’t get on in business, who couldn’t even get to his work on time. He must have been standing on the sidewalk outside, not knowing where he was, lost in that hot sympathy with childhood. But nine o’clock is not the time to feel sympathy with anything. Nine o’clock is sacred to the manipulation of a card catalogue of customers’ bills. + 

The spiked ball within him gave another lurch and tore at his vitals. Lord, how sick of life that dyspepsia made you! It took the very heart out of you so that, like a man on the rack, you were willing to admit anything your accusers asserted. He admitted thus what everybody tacitly asserted, that the trouble was all with him, with his weakness, with his feeble vitality, with his futile disgusts at the organization of the world he lived in, with his unmanly failure to seize other men by the throat and force out of them the things his family needed. + 

Sympathy for childhood nothing! If he felt any real sympathy for his own children, he’d somehow get more money to give them. What were fathers for, if not for that? If he were a “man among men,” he would do as other manly men did: use his wits to force the mothers of other children to spend more money than they ought on material possessions and thus have that money to spend in giving more material possessions to his own. + 

And even the bitter way he phrased his surrender⁠—yes, he knew that everybody would say that it was a weak man’s sour-grapes denunciation of what he was not strong enough to get. And they would be right. It was. + 

He bent his long, lean, sallow face over the desk, looking disdainful and bad-tempered as he always did when he was especially wretched and unhappy. + 

Harvey Bronson glanced at him and thought, “What a lemon to have around! He’d sour the milk by looking at it!” + 

Presently, as often happened to Lester, a lovely thing bloomed there, silent, unseen. Through the crazy, rhythmless chatter of the typewriters in the office, through the endless items on the endless bills, he heard it coming, as from a great distance, on radiant feet. It was only rhythm at first, divine, ordered rhythm, putting to flight the senseless confusion of what lay about him. + 

And then there glowed before him the glory of the words, the breathtaking upward lift of the first one, the sonorous cadences of the lines that followed, the majestic march of the end. + 

“Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars + 

With memory of the old revolt from awe, + 

He reached a middle height, and at the stars + 

Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank. + 

Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank + 

The army of unalterable law.” + 

Lester Knapp’s heart swelled, shone bright, escaped out of its misery, felt itself one with the greatness of the whole. + 

The words kept singing themselves in his ear⁠ ⁠… “… he looked, and sank.” “… marched, rank on rank.” “The army of unalterable law.” + 

The weighty, iron clang of the one-syllabled word at the end gave him a sensation of an ultimate strength somewhere. He leaned on that strength and drew a long free breath. + 

His lean sallow face was lighted from within, and shone. He leaned far over his desk to hide this. He tried to think of something else, to put away from him this unmerited beauty and greatness. A man who is a failure in a business-office ought not for an instant to forget his failure. The least he can do is to be conscious of his humiliation at all times. + 

But in spite of himself, his lips were curved in a sweet, happy smile. + 

Harvey Bronson glanced at him and felt irritated and aggrieved by his expression. “What call has a dead loss like Lester Knapp got to be looking so doggone satisfied with himself!” he thought. + 

V + 

That afternoon when at half-past four he stepped out on the street again, his long lean face was quite without expression. But it was not sallow. It was very white. + 

He walked straight before him for a step or two, stopped short and stared fixedly into the nearest show-window, one of Jim McCarthy’s achievements. + 

Mrs. Prouty happened to stand there too. She was looking at a two-hundred-dollar fur coat as tragically as though it were the Pearly Gates and she sinking to Gehenna. She dreamed at night about that fur coat. She wanted it so that she could think of little else. Unlike Mrs. Merritt, she had no resources of fine old Paisley shawls to fall back on. + 

She looked up now, saw who had come to a stop beside her, and said, with the professional cordiality of a rector’s wife, “Oh, how do you do, Mr. Knapp,” and was not at all surprised when he did not answer or notice that she was there. Lester Knapp was notoriously absentminded. It was one of his queer trying ways. He had so many. Poor Mrs. Knapp! But how brave she was about it. It was splendid to see a woman so loyal to a husband who deserved it so little. She looked sideways at him, forgetting for an instant her heartache over the coat. Mercy! What a sickly-looking man! Bent shoulders, hollow chest, ashy-gray skin⁠ ⁠… no physique at all. And the father of a family! Such men ought not to be allowed to have children. + 

The coat caught her eye again, with its basilisk fascination. She sighed and stepped into the store to ask to see it again, although she knew it was as far out of her reach as a diamond tiara. To handle its soft richness made her sick with desire, but she couldn’t keep away from it when she was downtown. + 

Her moving away startled Lester from his horrified gaze on nothingness, and he moved on with a jerky, galvanized gait like a man walking for the first time after a sickness. + 

He had lost his job. He had been fired. At the end of the month there would be no money at all to keep things going, not even the little they had always had. + 

Was it the earth he was treading, solid earth? It seemed to sway up and down under him till he was giddy. He was giddy. He was going to faint away. Oh, that would be the last disgrace. To faint away on the street because he had lost his job. The world began to whirl around before his eyes, to turn black. He caught at a tree. + 

For an instant his eyes were blurred, his ears rang loudly; and then with racking pains, consciousness began to come back to him. He still stood there, his arm still flung around the tree. He had not fainted. + 

In the pause while he fought inwardly for strength to go on, when every step seemed to plunge him more deeply into the black pit of despair, he was conscious of a steady voice, saying something in his ear⁠—or was it inside his head? The street was quite empty. It must be in his head. How plainly he heard it⁠—another one of those tags of poetry which haunted him.⁠ ⁠… + 

“But make no sojourn in thy outgoing, + 

For haply it may be + 

That when thy feet return at evening + 

Death shall come in with thee.” + 

At once it was as though strong wine had been held to his lips, as though he had drunk a great draught of vigor. His eye cleared, his heart leaped up, he started forward with a quick firm step. + 

“When thy feet return at evening + 

Death shall come in with thee.” + 

There was no need to despair. He was not helplessly trapped. There was a way out. A glorious way! The best way all around. The rightness of it blazed on him from every point as he hurried up the street. It meant for the children that at last he would be able to give them money, real money, just like any father. There would be not only the ten thousand dollars from his insurance policy but five thousand at least for the house and lot. He had been offered that the other day. Actual cash. And not only actual cash, but emancipation from the blighting influence of a futile and despised father. + 

The children didn’t despise him yet, but they would soon, of course. Everybody did. And Eva never lost a chance to bring home to them with silent bitterness the fact of their father’s utter worthlessness. Not that he blamed her, poor ambitious Eva, caught so young by the senses, and rewarded by such a blank as he! + 

And what a glorious thing for Eva⁠—freedom from the dead weight of an unsuccessful husband whom she had to pretend to put up with. An easier life for Eva all around. She would sell the house⁠—Eva would probably get more than five thousand dollars for it!⁠—and with that and the insurance money would move back to her parents’ big empty village home in Brandville as the lonely old people had so many times begged her to do. People lived for next to nothing in those country towns; and as a widow she could accept the proffered help from her prosperous store-keeping father which her pride had always made her refuse as a wife. + 

That’s what it would be for his family; and for himself⁠—Good God! an escape out of hell. Not only had he long ago given up any hope of getting out of life what he wanted for himself⁠—an opportunity for growth of the only sort he felt himself meant for, but he had long ago seen that he was incapable of giving to Eva and the children anything that anybody in the world would consider worth having. The only thing he was supposed to give them was money, and he couldn’t make that. + 

The words sang themselves in his head to a loud triumphant chant: + 

“For haply it may be + 

That when thy feet return.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He was brought up short by a sudden practical obstacle, looming black and foreboding before his impracticality, as life had always loomed before him. How could he manage it? His insurance policy was void in case of suicide, wasn’t it? He would have to contrive somehow to make it look like an accident. He was seared to the bone by the possibility that he might not be able to accomplish even that much against the shrewd business sense of the world which had always defeated him in everything else. + 

At the idea he burst into strange, loud laughter, the mad sound of which so startled even his own ears that he stopped short, stricken silent, looking apprehensively about him. + 

But there was nobody in sight, except far at the end of the street, three small figures which seemed to be running towards him and waving their arms. He looked at them stupidly for a moment before he recognized them. His own children! Oh, yes, of course, this was Thursday afternoon, Ladies’ Guild day, one of those precious Thursday hours that were different from all the others in the week. The children often got Stephen’s wraps on and brought him out to meet their father, to “start visiting” that much sooner. + 

They were nearer now, running, Stephen bouncing between them, holding tightly to their hands. They were all smiling at him with shining welcoming eyes. He heard the sweet shrillness of their twittering voices as they called to him. + 

The tears rushed to his eyes. They loved him. By God, they loved him, his children did! Yes, perhaps even Stephen a little. And he loved them! He had for them a treasure-store of love beyond imagination’s utmost reach! It was hard to leave them. + 

But so the world willed it. A father who had only love and no money⁠—the sooner he was out of the way the better. He had had that unquestioned axiom ground into every bleeding fiber of his heart. + 

“Oh, Father, Stevie got on his own coat and buttoned every.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Yubbers mineself too,” bragged Stephen breathlessly. + 

“Teacher says the first half of my play.⁠ ⁠…” + 

They had come up to him now, clambering up and down him, clawing lovingly at him, all talking at once. What good times they had together Thursday afternoons! + 

“Father, how does the ‘Walrus and the Carpenter’ go after ‘It seems a shame, the Walrus said’? Henry and I told Stevie that far, but we can’t remember any.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Lester Knapp swung Stephen up to his shoulder and took Henry and Helen by the hand. + 

“It seems a shame, the Walrus said,” he began in the deep, mock-heroic voice they all adored, + 

“To play them such a trick + 

After we’ve brought them out so far + 

And made them trot so quick.” + 

“Oh, yes,” cried the older children. “Now we know!” And as they swung along together, they all intoned delightedly, + 

“The Carpenter said nothing but + 

‘The butter’s spread too thick!’ ” + 

VI + 

Mrs. Anderson never forgot a detail of what happened that afternoon, and she soon became letter-perfect in her often-repeated statement of the essential facts. She told and retold her story word for word like a recitation learned by heart, without alteration; except as she allowed herself from time to time to stress a little more heavily her own importance as the only witness who had seen everything, to insist yet more vehemently on her absolute freedom from responsibility for the catastrophe. + 

“It was icy that afternoon, you know how it had thawed in the morning and then turned cold, and I was real nervous about slipping. I’m not so steady on my feet as I was fifty years ago and when I saw Mrs. Knapp putting on her things to leave the Guild meeting I said to her, ‘Mrs. Knapp,’ I said, ‘won’t you let me go along with you and take your arm over the icy places? I’m real nervous about slipping,’ I said. And she said, ‘Yes, of course,’ and we started out and I felt so relieved to have her to hold to. She’s the kind you couldn’t imagine slipping, you know, the kind you’d want to take her arm over hard places. She’s a wonderful woman, Mrs. Knapp is. I always said so even before all this happened. There’s nothing she can’t do. You ought to see the parlor furniture she recovered with her own hands, as good as any upholsterer you ever saw. And then didn’t her Henry pester her to let him have a dog, and a white dog at that! Of course she didn’t let him⁠—you know how a white dog’s hairs will show. When I was a girl I remember my Aunt Esther had a white dog⁠—but I was telling you about how we first saw the fire. We had just turned the corner by Wertheimer’s and I was looking down to pick my way, and Mrs. Knapp said, ‘Good gracious, Mrs. Anderson, what’s that on your roof?’ I looked quick but I couldn’t see anything, and she said, ‘It looks like a⁠—oh, yes, I see, a flame right by your chimney.’ + 

“And then I knew it must be so, for that end chimney of mine had had a crack in it for ever so long, and I’d tried and tried to get a mason to come, but you know how they hate a little tinkering repair job, and anyhow for a woman! Well, Mrs. Knapp she started on a run for her house to telephone the fire department and I scuffled along as fast as I could for fear of slipping. I wasn’t anywhere near my front walk yet when Mr. Knapp came running out from their house, bareheaded in all that cold with a pail in each hand. He could see me coming along slow and he hollered to me, ‘Where’s your long ladder, Mrs. Anderson?’ And I hollered back, ‘It’s hung up under the eaves of the barn, but don’t you go trying to climb up that steep icy roof, Mr. Knapp! You’ll break your neck if you do!’ I said to him just as I’m saying to you. I did my best to keep him from it! I feel bad enough without that. And I give you my word I hollered to him just as I told you, ‘Don’t you go trying to climb up that steep icy roof, Mr. Knapp. You’ll break your neck if you do!’ I said. + 

“He didn’t say anything back so I don’t know whether he heard me or not, though I hollered at the top of my voice, I promise you. He ran around through my back yard and I after him, only I had to go slow on account of the ice, and before I turned the corner of the house, I heard somebody yelling my name back of me, ‘Mrs. Anderson! Come and let us in quick! Your house is on fire!’ It was Mr. Emmet and his two boys from across the street. They had axes and they wanted me to let them in and up attic because they thought they could get at it from the inside. It seems they had a fire once in their chimney that they⁠—well, while I was trying to get my latchkey in the keyhole⁠—you can just better believe that by that time I was so mixed up I didn’t know which end my head was on, and Mr. Emmet had to take the key away and open the door himself⁠—that was after the fire engine drove up and you know what a terrible clatter they always make, and I was wild about their getting out their big hose because my sitting room ceiling had just been replastered and I was afraid the water would run down and spoil it, and by that time anyhow I had something else to worry about, for all creation was there, the way they do, you know, run wherever the fire engine goes, more men and boys than you ever saw! Awful tough-looking too, lots of them, from those low-down tenement houses near the tracks.⁠ ⁠… My, wasn’t I glad to see Mrs. Knapp coming back! She’s a master hand for managing things. She shooed all those hoodlums out double-quick. They were crowding right in after Mr. Emmet, bold as brass. I tell you there don’t anybody stay long when she tells ’em to go. And then she headed off the firemen from turning on their hose till some of them had gone up attic to see how the Emmets were getting along, and some others had gone around back to see what Mr. Knapp was up to. She ran upstairs with them to the attic, and I went out on the porch and leaned around to see if I could make out what they were doing back of the house⁠—and then⁠—oh, then⁠—I’ll never forget it to my dying day! I saw a couple of firemen come around from the back of the house carrying something. I couldn’t see what it was, it was so dark, but the way they carried it, the way they stepped⁠—when you’re as old as I am, and have seen as many dead people⁠ ⁠… you know! + 

“I screamed out at them, ‘Oh, oh, oh, what is it? What has happened?’ But I knew before they said a word. One of them said, ‘It’s Mr. Knapp. Don’t let Mrs. Knapp know till we can get the body over to the house!’ And the other one said, ‘He must have fallen off the roof and broken his back.’ ” + 