"I promise," said Eugene. Julia said nothing.
"Well, really," said Adele, from the doorway, "you"re a nervy lot, sitting around while I slave in the kitchen. "Gene, see if you can open the olives with this fool can opener. I tried."
There is no knowing what she expected to do in that week, Aunt Sophy; what miracle she meant to perform. She had no plan in her mind. Just hope. She looked strangely shrunken and old, suddenly. But when, three days later, the news came that America was to go into the war she knew that her prayers were answered.
Flora was beside herself. "Eugene won"t have to go. He isn"t quite twenty-one, thank G.o.d! And by the time he is it will be over. Surely."
She was almost hysterical.
Eugene was in the room. Aunt Sophy looked at him and he looked at Aunt Sophy. In her eyes was a question. In his was the answer. They said nothing. The next day Eugene enlisted. In three days he was gone. Flora took to her bed. Next day Adele, a faint, unwonted colour marking her cheeks, walked into her mother"s bedroom and stood at the side of the rec.u.mbent figure. Her father, his hands clasped behind him, was pacing up and down, now and then kicking a cushion that had fallen to the floor. He was chewing a dead cigar, one side of his face twisted curiously over the cylinder in his mouth so that he had a sinister and crafty look.
"Charnsworth, won"t you please stop ramping up and down like that! My nerves are killing me. I can"t help it if the war has done something or other to your business. I"m sure no wife could have been more economical than I have. Nothing matters but Eugene, anyway. How could he do such a thing! I"ve given my whole life to my children--"
H. Charnsworth kicked the cushion again so that it struck the wall at the opposite side of the room. Flora drew her breath in between her teeth as though a knife had entered her heart.
Adele still stood at the side of the bed, looking at her mother. Her hands were clasped behind her, too. In that moment, as she stood there, she resembled her mother and her father so startlingly and simultaneously that the two, had they been less absorbed in their own affairs, must have marked it.
The girl"s head came up, stiffly. "Listen. I"m going to marry Daniel Oakley."
Daniel Oakley was fifty, and a friend of her father"s. For years he had been coming to the house and for years she had ridiculed him. She and Eugene had called him St.u.r.dy Oak because he was always talking about his strength and endurance, his walks, his golf, his rugged health; pounding his chest meanwhile and planting his feet far apart. He and Baldwin had had business relations as well as friendly ones.
At this announcement Flora screamed and sat up in bed. H. Charnsworth stopped short in his pacing and regarded his daughter with a queer look; a concentrated look, as though what she had said had set in motion a whole maze of mental machinery within his brain.
"When did he ask you?"
"He"s asked me a dozen times. But it"s different now. All the men will be going to war. There won"t be any left. Look at England and France.
I"m not going to be left." She turned squarely toward her father, her young face set and hard. "You know what I mean. You know what I mean."
Flora, sitting up in bed, was sobbing. "I think you might have told your mother, Adele. What are children coming to! You stand there and say, "I"m going to marry Daniel Oakley." Oh, I _am_ so faint ... all of a sudden ... get the spirits of ammonia...."
Adele turned and walked out of the room. She was married six weeks later. They had a regular pre-war wedding--veil, flowers, dinner, and all. Aunt Sophy arranged the folds of her gown and draped her veil. The girl stood looking at herself in the mirror, a curious half-smile twisting her lips. She seemed slighter and darker than ever.
"In all this white, and my veil, I look just like a fly in a quart of milk," she said, with a laugh. Then, suddenly, she turned to her aunt who stood behind her and clung to her, holding her tight, tight. "I can"t!" she gasped. "I can"t! I can"t!"
Aunt Sophy held her off and looked at her, her eyes searching the girl.
"What do you mean, Della? Are you just nervous or do you mean you don"t want to marry him? Do you mean that? Then what are you marrying for?
Tell me! Tell your Aunt Sophy."
But Adele was straightening herself and pulling out the crushed folds of her veil. "To pay the mortgage on the old homestead, of course. Just like the girl in the play." She laughed a little. But Aunt Sophy did not laugh.
"Now look here, Delia. If you"re--"
But there was a knock at the door. Adele caught up her flowers. "It"s all right," she said.
Aunt Sophy stood with her back against the door. "If it"s money," she said. "It is! It is, isn"t it! Listen. I"ve got money saved. It was for you children. I"ve always been afraid. I knew he was sailing pretty close, with his speculations and all, since the war. He can have it all.
It isn"t too late yet. Adele! Della, my baby."
"Don"t, Aunt Sophy. It wouldn"t be enough, anyway. Daniel has been wonderful, really. Don"t look like that. I"d have hated being poor, anyway. Never could have got used to it. It is ridiculous, though, isn"t it? Like one of those melodramas, or a cheap movie. I don"t mind. I"m lucky, really, when you come to think of it. A plain little black thing like me."
"But your mother--"
"Mother doesn"t know a thing."
Flora wept mistily all through the ceremony but Adele was composed enough for two.
When, scarcely a month later, Baldwin came to Sophy Decker, his face drawn and queer, Sophy knew.
"How much?" she said.
"Thirty thousand will cover it. If you"ve got more than that--"
"I thought Oakley--Adele said--"
"He did, but he won"t any more, and this thing"s got to be met. It"s this d.a.m.ned war that"s done it. I"d have been all right. People got scared. They wanted their money. They wanted it in cash."
"Speculating with it, were you?"
"Oh, well, a woman doesn"t understand these business deals."
"No, naturally," said Aunt Sophy, "a b.u.t.terfly like me."
"Sophy, for G.o.d"s sake don"t joke now. I tell you this will cover it, and everything will be all right. If I had anybody else to go to for the money I wouldn"t ask you. But you"ll get it back. You know that."
Aunt Sophy got up, heavily, and went over to her desk. "It was for the children, anyway. They won"t need it now."
He looked up at that. Something in her voice. "Who won"t? Why won"t they?"
"I don"t know what made me say that. I had a dream."
"Eugene?"
"Yes."
"Oh, well, we"re all nervous. Flora has dreams every night and presentiments every fifteen minutes. Now, look here, Sophy. About this money. You"ll never know how grateful I am. Flora doesn"t understand these things but I can talk to you. It"s like this--"
"I might as well be honest about it," Sophy interrupted. "I"m doing it, not for you, but for Flora, and Delia--and Eugene. Flora has lived such a sheltered life. I sometimes wonder if she ever really knew any of you.
Her husband, or her children. I sometimes have the feeling that Delia and Eugene are my children--were my children."
When he came home that night Baldwin told his wife that old Soph was getting queer. "She talks about the children being hers," he said.
"Oh, well, she"s awfully fond of them," Flora explained. "And she"s lived her little narrow life, with nothing to bother her but her hats and her house. She doesn"t know what it means to suffer as a mother suffers--poor Sophy."
"Um," Baldwin grunted.
When the official notification of Eugene"s death came from the War Department Aunt Sophy was so calm that it might have appeared that Flora had been right. She took to her bed now in earnest, did Flora, and they thought that her grief would end in madness. Sophy neglected everything to give comfort to the stricken two.
"How can you sit there like that!" Flora would rail. "How can you sit there like that! Even if you weren"t his mother surely you must feel something."