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The Innocents: A Story for Lovers, a novel by Sinclair Lewis |
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Chapter 8 |
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_ CHAPTER VIII Having once admitted hopelessness, it was humanly natural that they should again hope that they hoped. For perhaps two weeks after the Carters' visit they pretended that the tea-room was open, and they did have six or seven customers. But late in September Father got his courage up, took out the family pen and bottle of ink, the tablet of ruled stationery and a stamped-envelope, and wrote to Mr. J. Pilkings that he wanted his shoe-store job back. When he had mailed the letter he told Mother. She sighed and said, "Yes, that is better, after all." An Indian summer of happiness came over them. They were going back to security. Again Father played the mouth-organ a little, and they talked of the familiar city places they would see. They would enjoy the movies--weeks since they had seen a movie! And they would have, Father chucklingly declared, "a bang-up dinner at Bomberghof Terrace, with music, and yes, by Jiminy! and cocktails!" For a week he awaited an answer, waited anxiously, though he kept reassuring himself that old Pilkings had promised to keep the job open for him. He received a reply. But it was from Pilkings's son. It informed him that Pilkings, _pere_, was rather ill, with grippe, and that until he recovered "no action can be taken regarding your valued proposition in letter of recent date." Bewildered, incredulous, Father had a flash of understanding that he, who felt himself so young and fit, was already discarded. Mother sat across the kitchen table from him, pretending to read the _Grimsby Recorder_, but really watching him. He held his forehead, looked dizzy, and let the letter slip from his fingers. "I--uh--" he groaned. "I-- Is there anything I can do for you around the house?" "Tell me--what did the letter say?" "Oh, Mother, Mother, maybe I won't get my job back at all! I honestly don't know what we can do." Running to her, he hid his face in her lap--he, the head of the family, the imperturbable adventurer, changed to a child. And Mother, she who had always looked to him for inspiration, was indeed the mother now. She stroked his cheek, she cried, "Never mind--'course you'll get it back, or a better one!" She made fun of his tousled hair till she had him ruefully smiling. Her voice had a crisp briskness which it had lacked in the days when she had brooded in the flat and waited for her man. Father could not face another indefinite period of such inactivity as had been sapping him all summer. He longed for the dusty drudgery of Pilkings & Son's; longed to be busy all day, and to bring home news--and money--to Mother at night. Aside from his personal desires, what were they going to do? They had left, in actual money, less than fifty dollars. Father did not become querulous, but day by day he became more dependent on Mother's cheer as October opened, as chilly rains began to shut them in the house. When she was not busy, and he was not cutting wood or forlornly pecking away at useless cleanings of the cold and empty tea-room, they talked of what they would do. Father had wild plans of dashing down to New York, of seeing young Pilkings, of getting work in some other shoe-store. But he knew very little about other stores. He was not so much a shoe-clerk as a Pilkings clerk. It had been as important a part of his duties, these many years, to know what to say to Mr. Pilkings as to know what to show to customers. Surely when Pilkings, senior, was well he would remember his offer to keep the job open. Mother cautiously began to suggest her plan. She spoke fondly of their daughter Lulu, of their grandson Harry, of how estimable and upright a citizen was their son-in-law, Mr. Harris Hartwig of Saserkopee, New York. As Father knew none of these suggestions to have any factual basis whatever his clear little mind was bored by them. Then, after a stormy evening when the fire was warm and they had cheered up enough to play cribbage, Mother suddenly plumped out her plan--to go to Saserkopee and live with daughter till something turned up. Father shrank. He crouched in his chair, a wizened, frightened, unhappy, oldish man. "No, no, no, no!" he cried. "She is a good girl, but she would badger us to death. She wouldn't let us do one single thing our way. She always acts as though she wanted to make you all over, and I love you the way you are. I'd rather get a job cooking on a fishing schooner than do that." But he knew Mother's way of sticking to an idea, and he began to persuade himself that Saserkopee was a haven of refuge. Whenever they seemed to be having a peaceful discussion of Lulu Hartwig's canary-yellow sweater, they were hearing her voice, wondering if they could tolerate its twangy comments the rest of their lives. If the weather was clear they sat out in the rose-arbor as though they were soon to lose it. The roses were dead, now, but a bank of purple asters glowed by the laurel-bushes, and in the garden plucky pansies withstood the chill. They tried to keep up a pretense of happiness, but always they were listening--listening. There were two or three October days when the sea was blue and silver, sharply and brightly outlined against the far skyline where the deep blue heavens modulated to a filmy turquoise. Gulls followed the furrows of the breakers. Father and Mother paced the edge of the cliff or sat sun-refreshed in the beloved arbor. Then a day of iron sea, cruelly steel-bright on one side and sullenly black on the other, with broken rolling clouds, and sand whisking along the dunes in shallow eddies; rain coming and the breakers pounding in with a terrifying roar and the menace of illimitable power. Father gathered piles of pine-knots for the fire, whistling as he hacked at them with a dull hatchet--trimming them, not because it was necessary, but because it gave him something energetic to do. Whenever he came into the kitchen with an armful of them he found Mother standing at the window, anxiously watching the flurries of sand and rain. "Be a fine night to sit by the fire," he chirruped. "Guess we'll get out the old mouth-organ and have a little band-concert, admission five bucks, eh?" Something of the old command was in his voice. Mother actually needed his comfort against the black hours of storm! Though they used a very prosaic stove for cooking, the old farm-house fireplace still filled half the back of the kitchen, and this had become the center of their house. Neither of them could abide the echoing emptiness and shabby grandeur of the tea-room. Before the fireplace they sat, after a supper at which Father had made much of enjoying fish chowder, though they had had it four times in eight days. Cheaper. And very nourishing. The shutters banged, sand crashed against the panes, rain leaked in a steady drip down one corner of the room, and the sea smashed unceasingly. But Father played "My Gal's a High-born Lady" and "Any Little Girl That's a Nice Little Girl Is the Right Little Girl for Me," and other silly, cheerful melodies which even the hand-organs had forgotten. There was a sense of glaring mounting light through the window which gave on the cliff. "I wonder what that is," Mother shuddered. "It's like a big fire. I declare it seems as though the whole world was coming to an end to-night." She turned from the window and shivered over the embers, in her golden-oak rocker which Father had filled with cushions. He kissed her boyishly and trotted over to the window. The fact that they were alone against the elements, with no apartment-house full of people to share the tumultuous night, weakened her, but delighted him. He cried out, with a feeling of dramatic joy. There was a fire below, on the beach, where there should be nothing but sand and the terror of the storm. The outer edge of the cliff was outlined by the light. "It's a wreck!" he whooped. "It's the life-savers! Mother, I'm going down. Maybe there's something I can do. I want to do something again! Maybe some poor devil coming ashore in the breeches buoy--help him ashore-- Don't suppose I could row--" He darted at the closet and yanked out his ineffectual city raincoat and rubbers, and the dreary wreck of what had once been his pert new vacation traveling-cap. "No, no, don't, please don't!" Mother begged. "You couldn't do anything, and I don't dast to go out--and I'm afraid to stay here alone." But Father was putting on his raincoat. "I'll just run down and see--be right back." "Don't go a step farther than the top of the cliff," she wailed. He hesitated. He wanted, more than anything else in the world, to be in the midst of heroic effort. The gods had set the stage for epic action that night, and his spirit was big with desire for bigness. It was very hard to promise to put goloshes upon his winged feet. But Mother held out her hands. "Oh, I need you, Seth. You'll stay near me, won't you?" There may have been lordly deeds in the surf that night--men gambling their lives to save strangers and aliens. One deed there certainly was--though the movies, which are our modern minstrelsy, will never portray it. While he strained with longing to go down and show himself a man--not just a scullion in an unsuccessful tea-room--Father stood on the edge of the cliff and watched the life-savers launch the boat, saw them disappear from the radius of the calcium carbide beach-light into the spume of surf. He didn't even wait to see them return. Mother needed him, and he trotted back to tell her all about it. They went happily to bed, and she slept with her head cuddled on his left shoulder, his left arm protectingly about her. It was still raining when they awoke, a weary, whining drizzle. And Father was still virile with desire of heroism. He scampered out to see what he could of the wreck. He returned, suddenly. His voice was low and unhappy as he demanded, "Oh, Mother, it's-- Come and see." He led her to the kitchen door and round the corner of the house. The beloved rose-arbor had been wrecked by the storm. The lattice-work was smashed. The gray bare stems of the crimson ramblers drooped drearily into a sullen puddle. The green settee was smeared with splashed mud. "They couldn't even leave us that," Father wailed, in the voice of a man broken. "Oh yes, yes, yes, I'll go to Lulu's with you. But we won't stay. Will we! I will fight again. I did have a little gumption left last night, didn't I? Didn't I? But--but we'll go there for a while." _ |
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