And Deborah, was as bad as the bride. At times it appeared to Roger as though her fingers fairly itched to jab and tug at his poor old house, which wore an air of mute reproach. She revealed a part of her nature that he viewed with dark amazement. Every hour she could spare from school, she was changing something or other at home—with an eager glitter in her eyes. Doing it all for Laura, she said. Fiddlesticks and rubbish! She did it because she liked it!
In gloomy wrath one afternoon he went up to see Edith and quiet down. She was well on the way to recovery, but instead of receiving solace here he only found fresh troubles. For sitting up in her old-fashioned bed, with an old-fashioned cap of lace upon her shapely little head, Edith made her father feel she had washed her hands of the whole affair.
"I'm sorry," she said in an injured tone, "that Laura doesn't care enough about her oldest sister to put off the wedding two or three weeks so I could be there. It seems rather undignified, I think, for a girl to hurry her wedding so. I should have loved to make it the dear simple kind of wedding which mother would have wanted. But so long as she doesn't care for that—and in fact has only found ten minutes—once—to run in and see the baby—"
In dismay her father found himself defending the very daughter of whom he had come to complain. It was not such a short engagement, he said, he had learned they had been engaged some time before they told him.
"Do you approve of that?" she rejoined. "When I was engaged, I made Bruce go to you before I even let him—" here Edith broke off primly. "Of course that was some time ago. An engagement, Laura tells me, is 'a mere experiment' nowadays. They 'experiment' till they feel quite sure—then notify their parents and get married in a week."
"She is rushing it, I admit," Roger soothingly replied. "But she has her mind set on Paris in June."
"Paris in June," said Edith, "sums up in three words Laura's whole conception of marriage. You really ought to talk to her, father. It's your duty, it seems to me."
"What do you mean?"
"I'd rather not tell you." Edith's glance went sternly to the cradle by her bed. "Laura pities me," she said, "for having had five children."
"Oh, now, my dear girl!"
"She does, though—she said as much. When she dropped in the other day and I tried to be sympathetic and give her a little sound advice, she said I had had the wedding I liked and the kind of married life I liked, and she was going to have hers. And she made it quite plain that her kind is to include no children. It's to be simply an effort to find by 'experiment' whether or not she loves Hal Sloane. If she doesn't—" Edith gave a slight but emphatic wave of dismissal.
"Do you mean to say Laura told you that?" her father asked with an angry frown.
"I mean she made me feel it—as plainly as I'm telling it! What I can't understand," his daughter went on, "is Deborah's attitude in the affair."
"What's the matter with Deborah?" inquired Roger dismally.
"Oh, nothing's the matter with Deborah. She's quite self-sufficient. She at least can play with modern ideas and keep her head while she's doing it. But when poor Laura—a mere child with the mind of a chicken—catches vaguely at such ideas, applies them to her own little self and risks her whole future happiness, it seems to me perfectly criminal for Deborah not to interfere! Not even a word of warning!"
"Deborah believes," said her father, "in everyone's leading his own life."
"That's rot," was Edith's curt reply. "Do I lead my own life? Does Bruce? Do you?"
"No," growled Roger feelingly.
"Do my children?" Edith demanded. "I know Deborah would like them to. That's her latest and most modern fad, to run a school where every child shall sit with a rat in its lap or a goat, and do just what he pleases—follow his natural bent, she says. I hope she won't come up to the mountains and practice on my children. I should hate to break with Deborah," Edith ended thoughtfully.
Roger rose and walked the room. The comforting idea entered his mind that when the wedding was over he would take out his collection of rings and carefully polish every one. But even this hope did not stay with him long.
"With Laura at home," he heard Edith continue, "you at least had a daughter to run your house. If Deborah tries to move you out—"
"She won't!" cried Roger in alarm.
"If she does," persisted Edith, "or if she begins any talk of the kind—you come to me and I'll talk to her!"
Her father walked in silence, his head down, frowning at the floor.
"It seems funny," Edith continued, "that women like me who give children their lives, and men like Bruce who are building New York—actually doing it all the time—have so little to say in these modern ideas. I suppose it's because we're a little too real."
"To come back to the wedding," Roger suggested.
"To come back to the wedding, father dear," his daughter said compassionately. "I'm afraid it's going to be a 'mere form' which will make you rather wretched. When you get so you can't endure it, come in and see me and the baby."
As he started for home, her words of warning recurred to his mind. Yes, here was the thing that disturbed him most, the ghost lurking under all this confusion, the part which had to do with himself. It was bad enough to know that his daughter, his own flesh and blood, was about to settle her fate at one throw. But to be moved out of his house bag and baggage! Roger strode wrathfully up the street.
"It's your duty to talk to her," Edith had said. And he meditated darkly on this: "Maybe I will and maybe I won't. I know my duties without being told. How does Edith know what her mother liked? We had our own likings, her mother and I, and our own ideas, long after she was tucked into bed. And yet she's always harping on 'what mother would have wanted.' What I should like to know—right now—is what Judith would want if she were here!"
With a pang of utter loneliness amid these vexing problems, Roger felt it crowding in, this city of his children's lives. As he strode on down Broadway, an old hag selling papers thrust one in his face and he caught a glimpse of a headline. Some bigwig woman re-divorced. How about Laura's "experiment"? A mob of street urchins nearly upset him. How about Deborah? How about children? How about schools, education, the country? How about God? Was anyone thinking? Had anyone time? What a racket it made, slam-banging along. The taxis and motor trucks thundered and brayed, dark masses of people swept endlessly by, as though their very souls depended on their dinners or their jobs, their movies, roaring farces, thrills, their harum scarum dances, clothes. A plump little fool of a woman, her skirt so tight she could barely walk, tripped by on high-heeled slippers. That was it, he told himself, the whole city was high-heeled! No solid footing anywhere! And, good Lord, how they chattered!
He turned into a less noisy street. What would Judith want if she were here? It became disturbingly clear to him that she would undoubtedly wish him to have a talk with Laura now, find out if she'd really made up her mind not to have any children, and if so to tell her plainly that she was not only going against her God but risking her own happiness. For though Judith had been liberal about any number of smaller things, she had been decidedly clear on this. Yes, he must talk to Laura.
"And she'll tell me," he reflected, "that Edith put me up to it!"
If only his oldest daughter would leave the other girls alone! Here she was planning a row with Deborah over whether poor young George should be allowed to play with rats! It was all so silly! … Yes, his three