His Family quotes

No matter how long each one of them lives, won’t their lives feel to them unfinished like ours, only just beginning? I wonder how far they will go. And then their children will grow up and it will be the same with them.

Unfinished lives. Oh, dearie, what children all of us are.

”

He had put his arm around her then and had held her very tight. And feeling the violent trembling of her husband’s fierce revolt, slowly bending back her head and looking up into his eyes she had continued steadily:

“And when you come after me, my dear, oh, how hungry I shall be for all you will tell me. For you will live on in our children’s lives.”

And she had asked him to promise her that.

So death had come to Roger’s soul. He had been deaf and blind to his children. Nights by the thousand spent alone.

Like a gray level road in his memory now was the story of his family.

When had his spirit begun to awaken? He could not tell, it had been so slow.

“What do you think’s my latest?” he asked, and he gave a low chuckle which Roger liked.

“Last week I was a brewer, today I’m an engineer,” he said. “Can you beat it? A building contractor. Me.”

And as he smoked his cigarette, in laconic phrases he explained how a huge steel construction concern had gone to the wall, through building skyscrapers “on spec” and outstripping even the growth of New York.

“I want you to know him—very soon.” There was a moment’s silence.

“I’m going to marry him, dad,” she said.

And Roger looked at her blankly. He felt his limbs beginning to tremble. “I’ve been waiting to tell you when we were alone,” she added in an awkward tone.

“Who is he?” he asked hoarsely. And she answered smiling,

“A perfectly nice young man named Sloane.”

“Don’t, Laura—tell me! What does he do?”

“I’ll have that news for breakfast!”

Roger smote his paper savagely.

Why couldn’t Laura have waited a little? Restlessly he walked the room. Then he went into the hall, took his hat and a heavy stick which he used for his night rambles, and walked off through the neighborhood.

“What is it?” she inquired.

“Queer,” he answered gruffly, “how a man can neglect his children⁠—as I have done, as I do still⁠—when the one thing he wants most in life is to see each one of ’em happy.”

“Don’t worry about us, Bruce,” she said. “We’re going to have the time of our lives!” Bruce fairly beamed his gratitude.

“If she don’t marry,” he declared, as he watched the train move slowly out, “there’ll be a great mother wasted.”

That expressed it exactly, Roger thought.

Nothing could take fire here, not even a man’s imagination, even though he did not feel old.

Now and then in the elevator, as some youngster with eager eyes pushed nervously against him, Roger would frown and wonder, “What are you so excited about?”

“Do you know why you are such a help?” she said.

“It’s because you have never grown old⁠—because you’ve never allowed yourself to grow absolutely certain about anything in life.”

A smile half sad and half perplexed came on her father’s heavy face.

“Why didn’t you let me know of this?” Deborah asked gently.

“Because I knew what you’d want to do⁠—take him off to a hospital! And I ain’t going to have it! I promised him he could die at home!”

“I’m sorry,” Deborah answered. There was a moment’s silence, and the baby whimpered in its sleep. One child had gone to his father’s bed and was frowning at his agony as though it were a tiresome sight.

“A tonic,” she repeated. And with a sudden tightening of her wide and sensitive mouth, Deborah added slowly,

“Because, though I’ve known many hungry boys, Johnny Geer is the hungriest of them all⁠—hungry to get on in life, to grow and learn and get good things, get friends, love, happiness, everything!”

As she spoke of this child in her family, over her strong quiet face there swept a fierce, intent expression which struck Roger rather cold. What a fight she was making, this daughter of his, against what overwhelming odds.

A horse and buggy were outside, and within he spied a lean young woman neatly dressed in a plain dark suit. With a lawn mower brought from home she was cutting the grass on her family lot. And she seemed to fit into the landscape.

New England had grown very old.

Late one night toward the end of July, there came a loud honk from down the hill, then another and another. And as George in his pajamas came rushing from his bedroom shouting radiantly, “Gee! It’s dad!”—they heard the car thundering outside.

“I was once a child.” To most of us these are mere words. To few is it ever given to attain so much as even a glimpse into the warm and quivering soul of that little stranger of long ago.

We do not know how we were made.

“I moulded you, my little son. And as I have been to you, so you will be to your children. In their lives, too, we shall be there.”

“Most of ’em love their children,” Roger said uneasily. Baird turned on him a steady look.

“Love isn’t enough,” he retorted.

“The time is coming very soon when we’ll have the right to guard the child not only when it’s a baby but even before it has been born.”

“But look at Edith,” his daughter rejoined. “She hasn’t a single interest that I can find outside her home. It seems to have swallowed her, body and soul.” A frowning look of perplexity swept over Deborah’s mobile face, and with a whimsical sigh she exclaimed,

“Oh, this queer business of families!”

In December there came a little crash. Late one evening Laura came bursting in upon them in a perfect tantrum, every nerve in her lithe body tense, her full lips visibly quivering, her voice unsteady, and her big black eyes aflame with rage.

Young Sloane is not a bad sort of a chap—works hard downtown and worships his wife. The way he lives—well, it isn’t mine—and mine isn’t his—and we both let it go at that. But the women can’t, they haven’t it in ’em.

Each sits with her way of life in her lap. You can’t see it over the tablecloth, but, my God, how you feel it!

The worst of it is,” he ended, “that after one of these terrible meals each woman is more set than before in her own way of living. Not that I don’t like Edith’s way,” her husband added hastily.

“You do, eh,” he growled.

“Then tell her to plan her wedding to come before her funeral.”

As he rose to go, Roger took his hand.

“All right,” she conceded grudgingly, “I’ll roister. Come and get me. But I’d much prefer when the play is done to come home and have milk and crackers here.”

“Deborah,” he said cheerfully, “for a radical school reformer you’re the most conservative woman I know.”

At last Bruce stirred a little and began breathing deep and fast.

And so death came into the family.

“John,” he asked, in deep reproach, “do you expect this office to feed the vanity of thieves?”

“Where’s the vanity,” John rejoined, “in being called a crime wave?”

And seeing the sudden tremor of mirth which had appeared on Roger’s face, “Look here, Mr. Gale,” he went eagerly on.

How do we know it won’t do ’em good? It’s church to ’em, that’s what it is—and business for this office. Nine of these guys have sent in their money just in the last week or so—”

“Look out, my boy,” said Roger, with slow and solemn emphasis. “If you aren’t extremely careful you’ll find yourself a millionaire.”

“But wait a minute, Mr. Gale—”

Roger had thought of mankind as mature, but there had come to him of late the same feeling he had had before in the bosom of his family.

Mankind had suddenly unmasked and shown itself for what it was⁠—still only a precocious child, with a terrible precocity.

For its growth had been one sided. Its strength was growing at a speed breathless and astounding.

You can get money enough for them, but you won’t raise a hand to help with mine!” And as plainly Deborah answered, “My children are starving, shivering, freezing! What do yours know about being poor?”

Two mothers, each with a family, and each one baffled, brought to bay.

There was something so insatiable in each angry mother’s eyes.

“Then tell me where you mean to live!”

“I’m not going to live⁠—I’m going to die⁠—very soon⁠—I have definite knowledge.”

Without speaking Deborah rose; her face went white. Her father kept tight hold of her hands, and he felt them trembling, growing cold.

From the nursery adjoining came little Bruce’s piping laugh, and Roger could hear the nurse moving about. Afterwards for a long time he could hear only creaks and breathings.

Never had the old house seemed so like a living creature.

For nearly forty years it had held all that he had loved and known, all he had been sure of. Outside of it was the strange, the new, the uncertain, the vast unknown, stretching away to infinity. …

“I know he is, son, but we’ve got to go slow.” And Roger’s look passed furtively along the faces in the car. “We don’t want to forget,” he warned, “that this is still New England.

Every new idea we have we want to go easy with, snake it in.

”

Vaguely he pictured them groping their way, just as he himself had done.

It seemed to Roger that all his days he had been only entering life, as some rich bewildering thicket like this copse of birches here, never getting very deep, never seeing very clearly, never understanding all.

And so it had been with his children, and so it was with these children of Edith’s, and so it would be with those many others—always groping, blundering, starting—children, only children all.

But the stars were quiet and serene. The meadows and the forests on the broad sweep of the mountain side took on still brighter, warmer hues.

And there was no gloom in these long goodbyes.

On a frosty night in September, he left the farm to go to the city. From his seat in the small automobile Roger looked back at the pleasant old house with its brightly lighted windows, and then he turned to George by his side:

“I had it made,” was the grave reply. “

When a fellow has got up in life enough to have a stenographer, it’s high time he was sitting down.

”

Over the door of one of the schools, were these words carved in the stone:

“Humanity is still a child. Our parents are all people who have lived upon the earth⁠—our children, all who are to come. And the dawn at last is breaking. The great day has just begun.”

This spirit of triumphal life poured deep into Roger’s house.

“Oh, no, don’t give me up,” she said. “For you see,” she added softly, “

I’m a heathen with a great deal of love in her heart for thee, my dearest dad.

May I bring him down, my husband?”