The Homemaker · Part III · Chapter 17 (2/2)

Stephen threw back his head and, laughing proudly, looked up at his father. His face was ruddy and glowing with his effort, with his triumph. All his fatigue was gone. Whir‑r‑r!

His father drew a long breath. He felt like clapping his hands and shouting “Hurrah!” It had been nip and tuck there for a while. Talk about the caveman who had invented the bow and arrow! If Stephen had been a caveman he would have invented the telephone. What a stirring spectacle it had been. He felt as though he had been reading some Emerson. Only it was lots better than any Emerson!

“Well, sir,” he exclaimed to the child, “I certainly will hate to have you begin going to school!”

The rice pudding was done. He took it out and put some coal on the fire and glanced at the clock. Why, it was almost time to expect the other children in from school. How the afternoon had flown! It was hard to put your mind on anything but the absorbing spectacle of Stephen’s advance into life. He must get out the milk and cookies with which he welcomed the others in. They always burst in as soon as possible after four. Sometimes Lester wondered what they had done before, in the old days, in the interval between four and six, when he usually found them waiting for him at the door of the store. Evangeline used to say that they were “playing ’round” with their schoolmates.

He had not noticed that Stephen had stopped turning the eggbeater and was now looking up hard into his face, until the little voice asked, “What will you hate to have me going to ’chool for?”

Lester had to think for a moment before he could remember what he had said. Then, “Great Scott, Stevie, why wouldn’t I? I’ll miss you⁠—what do you think? I’ll be lonesome without my funny, nice, little boy to keep me company.”

He wondered what made Stephen ask such a question. The child usually was quick enough to catch your meaning. He wheeled himself into the pantry and did not see that Stephen, after standing for a moment, turned away and went quietly out of the room. When he came back and found him gone, Lester thought that probably he had gone upstairs to look for another toy.

Stephen felt very queer inside, sort of shaky and trembly. He had never felt like that before. And the queerness went all over him so that he couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t making up a queer face that Father would ask him about. The first thing to do was to get away where nobody would see him. He turned away, trying to pretend to walk carelessly and went into the empty dining-room.

But it didn’t stop. He could feel it, making him tremble and shake inside. And yet he didn’t feel sick⁠—oh, no! It was a strange good feeling that was almost too much for him. It was too big for him. He was too little to hold it. It seemed to overflow him, so that he could scarcely breathe, in a bright, warm, shining flood. And Stephen was such a little boy! He had never felt anything like it before. It frightened him and yet he loved it. He must get off somewhere by himself where he would be safe⁠—and alone⁠—with the new, strange, bright, drowning feeling.

Under the stairs⁠—always his refuge⁠—he crept in on his hands and knees, not noticing the dust which flew up in his face as he crept. Those corners were not clean as they had been when Mother kept the house, but Stephen thought of nothing but that now the quivering was all over him, even his face⁠ ⁠… the way it was when he was going to cry. He and his new feeling crept farther and farther in, as far as he could go. He sat down then, cross-legged, his face turned towards the safe, blind wall. He was safe. He was all alone. It was dark. He said to himself so low that there was no sound, “Father will miss me when I go to school.” Then, lower still, “Father likes to have me around.”

And suddenly Stephen’s eyes overflowed and his cheeks were wet, and hot drops fell down on his dusty hands.

But he was not crying. He knew that. It hurt to cry. And this did not hurt. It helped. The water ran quietly out of his eyes and poured down his cheeks. It was as though something that had ached inside him so long that he had almost forgotten about it were melting and running away. He could feel it hurting less and less as the tears fell on his hands. It was as though he were being emptied of that ache.

The tears fell more and more slowly and stopped. And now nothing hurt Stephen at all. There was no ache anywhere, not even the old one, so old he had almost forgotten about it. Stephen felt weak and empty without it and leaned his head faintly against the dusty dark wall.

He sat there a long time, it seemed to him, till little by little he felt the weakness going out of his legs and the emptiness out of his body. He must go back to Father now, or Father would wonder where he was.

But Father would think he had been crying and would ask him why. How could Father tell the difference if he saw the wet on his cheeks? Stephen would have died rather than try to tell anyone what had been happening to him. He did not know at all what had been happening to him. He would rub the wet off his cheeks with his hands. Yes, that would do. Then Father would never know. He scrubbed vigorously at his eyes and his cheeks with his fists, and when he felt that there was no dampness left, he backed out on his hands and knees into the dining-room again. Was it the same room it had been when he had crept in? It didn’t seem possible! It looked so different. And Stephen felt so different. Like another Stephen altogether. So light! So washed! So clear! He didn’t seem to weigh anything at all, but to float through the air as he walked. Nothing looked to Stephen as it had. The walls and furniture had a sprightly, cheerful expression. He waved his hand to them as he floated out to the kitchen.

Lester had been busy at first getting the four o’clock lunch ready for the children. He had taken down from the pantry shelf a paper bag of cookies, yes, the boughten kind; they happened to be out of homemade ones. He ought to have been making some instead of hanging fascinated over Stephen’s hand-to-hand battle with the universe.

But it was, glory be, no longer such a tragic matter, the sort of food Henry had! It certainly was a special provision of Providence that Henry and Helen were so much stronger than they had been; that just when they fell into his inexpert hands, they had begun to outgrow their delicate health. However could he have managed the care of them if they had been sick so often as when poor Eva had been struggling with the care of them? Wasn’t it all a piece of her bad luck to have had them during that trying period and turn them over to him just as her wonderful cooking and nursing had pulled them through. What a splendid nurse she was!

He poured out a glass of milk apiece for the children and looked impatiently at the clock. He loved the moment of their noisy arrival, loved the clatter of their feet on the porch, the bang of the door thrown open. Why were they late today?

Oh, yes, he remembered. They were due at a rehearsal of the school-play⁠—Helen’s play⁠—the one they had worked out together. What fun it was to have her bring him her little experiments in writing! He began to think that perhaps she might have a little real talent. Of course most of what she set down was merely a copy of what she had read, but every once in a while there was a nugget, something she had really seen or felt. This, for instance, which he had found scrawled across the flyleaf of her arithmetic⁠—poor Helen and her hated arithmetic!

“The measured beats of the old clock

Bring peace to my heart

And quiet to my mind.”

That was the real thing, a genuine expression of her own personality. How different from the personality of her mother, to whom the ticking of a clock could scarcely be anything but a trumpet-call to action. Different from her father’s personality too. The clock always said to him,

“But at my back I always hear

Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.⁠ ⁠…”

Ah, what a second-rater he was! How he always thought of everything in terms of what somebody else had said! In earlier days when he was a boy and still thought he might perhaps amount to something this had been an affliction to him, a secret shame. But now he did not grieve over it. Since he had died and come back to this other life, he took everything and himself, too, more simply, with little concern for the presentability of the role he was to play. If, honestly, that was the sort of nature he had, why rebel against it? The only people who got anywhere by rebelling were rebels to begin with. And he was not. Why wasn’t it enough, anyhow, to love the beauties other men had created?

He heard Stephen come back into the kitchen. He had been gone quite a while after that toy.

“Father,” said Stephen softly, behind him.

Lester started at the color of the little voice. There was something queer about it.

Cautiously, with his ever-present dread of intruding, he glanced at Stephen not curiously, but with a casual air.

The little boy came up to his chair and stood there, looking up at him with a strange expression of shining-quiet in his eyes. He had evidently been crying hard, for his cheeks were covered with the smeary marks of black where he had wiped off the tears with his dirty hands. But what on earth could he have been crying about? There had not been a sound.

And he did not look like a child who has been crying. He looked⁠ ⁠… he was smiling now⁠ ⁠… he looked like a little golden seraph hovering around the golden gates.

“Father,” said Stephen in a small, clear voice. He hesitated, evidently trying to think of something to say, his shining eyes fixed on his father’s. Finally he brought out, “Wouldn’t you like me to bring you a drink of water?” His smile, as he said this, was dazzling, his voice sweet, sweet with loving-kindness.

“Why, yes, Stevie,” said his father over a lump in his throat, “I do believe I am thirsty without realizing it.”

Stephen pushed a chair before him to the sink, climbed up on it, took down the dipper and held it under the faucet. The bright water gushed out, spattering over him, over the floor. He caught half the dipper full, turned off the faucet, and carried the dipper awkwardly back to his father, who took a long drink appreciatively.

“Thank you, old man,” he said as he handed it back.

Stephen set it back on the table and returned to hover near his father, smiling up at him speechlessly.

Lester felt the room filled with the flutter of airy, unseen wings and ached with his helpless wonder at them. What could have happened? What could have happened? He held his breath for fear of saying the wrong thing in his clumsy ignorance. All he dared do was to smile silently back at Stephen.

“Father,” said Stephen again, although he evidently had nothing to add to the word, “Father.⁠ ⁠…” He could think of nothing else to say to express the mysteriously born fullness of his heart.

“Yes, Stevie,” said his father, his own heart very full.

“Father⁠ ⁠… would it hurt your sick legs very much if I sat in your lap for a while?”

Lester reached out hungrily and pulled the child up into his arms. “There’s just one good thing that can be said about my sick legs, Stephen,” he said, trying to be whimsical, “they positively cannot be hurt any more.”

Stephen laughed a little, nestled, turned himself, and then with a long sigh as though he were very, very tired, with a sudden relaxation of all his warm little body, was asleep, his round dark head falling back limply on his father’s shoulder.

Lester was almost frightened. Had the child fainted? Was he sick? But the expression on Stephen’s face was of complete calm. It looked like a smooth, closed bud, secret and serene, close-wrapped, all the personality at rest, nothing left but the tender mask of flesh.

Lester stirred involuntarily a hair’s breadth. Stephen felt the movement and his eyes flew open wide for an instant. At first they were shallow and meaningless in a mere physical opening. Then, before sleep took him wholly, he recognized his father, and all that made the little boy Stephen shone out of his eyes like a candle leaping up brightly before it goes out. That look was for Lester. Without stirring, in the exquisite smile of his eyes, his lips, all his transfigured little face, Stephen gave himself lovingly to his father.

Long after the burning little spirit had gone elsewhere, leaving the inert, deep-breathing, warm, small body on the paralyzed knees, his father sat there, his lips quivering.

Presently he said to himself, “And I am the man who, three months ago, was so eager to get out of life.”