Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 660
“Yes,” Kate said. “Father and I have considered it carefully.”
“ ’Carefully!’ ” Aunt Daisy exclaimed. “Good God!” Then she laughed. “Oh, I see! His law practice is so close to utter disappearance already that it really doesn’t matter. That’s what you mean by considering it carefully! Well, when he comes back what’s he to go into — at his age? Fat chance! I suppose you and he have considered that carefully, too?”
“I’ve learned shorthand and I’m a good typist,” Kate said. “I’ve been to see Mr. Roe. He’s always been a friend of mine and he appears to think I’ll be capable. He says when we come back he’ll be glad to take me on. He’s very liberal with his employees, and Father and I can take a small apartment somewhere.”
“And Malcolm can go on reading the papers and playing bridge and storing his bootlegger’s supplies at the Carlyle Club? On a typist’s salary?”
Kate was able to laugh. “Those are bridges to cross when we come to them. A year and a half’s a long time.”
“You think so? You’ll know better when you’re my age, Kate Fennigate. I’m sixty-three, and a year and a half goes like the snap of your fingers or people dying or the way this town keeps growing. What’s the use my telling you, though? Old people can’t tell young people anything. That’s why young people don’t know anything. Look at my son-in-law! Just like your father, except Ames doesn’t drink. Some people used to say your father was going to be a great lawyer; I guess it’s about time they quit saying that of Ames — he hasn’t had a single thing to do except clerical work ever since they gave him that dried mouse case he lost. Couldn’t even beat a dead mouse! That’s a record, isn’t it?”
Kate was deeply relieved when Aunt Daisy let her go back to the packing, and her heart was almost light on the day of departure. East Cherry Street, the ugly house where she’d grown up, her long “friendship” with Laila Capper — these were attachments that were really her Old Men of the Sea, and her shoulders were being freed from them. There was another attachment, though, one that went with her as she lay in her berth on the eastbound train. Ames had told Cousin Mary to say good-bye and bon voyage for him; he hadn’t come with the others to see her and her father off at the station, though even Laila Capper did that much.
“I’ll try to be gone a long, long time,” Kate thought. “While I’m away maybe I’ll meet somebody — somebody else. Maybe when I come back I won’t feel this way. Oh, I hope not!”
IX
“SHE WRITES GOOD letters to you, Mary,” Aunt Daisy said, and of course neither she nor her daughter suspected that the letters were “good” because of a hope that Ames Lanning would read them or hear them read. As it happened, he’d been listening to this one, though absently. “Her descriptions make you see the places and the people,” Aunt Daisy continued. “I liked it better when they were in England and Paris and then Italy last year. Malcolm and she’ve been in that Munich pension over six months now and I bet she’s practically running the place herself by this time. She would! Never could touch a thing on this earth without trying to manage it. She’s certainly been able to make the money hold out. That old Roe may be right about her having a capacity for being a business woman. I hope she keeps as tight hold on Malcolm as she does on the dollars. He’s got away from her a few nights, though, I’ll bet!”
“Poor Kate,” Cousin Mary murmured. “I hope not.”
“She’d never tell us if he did,” Aunt Daisy said. “Never knew anybody tighter-mouthed. Always did seem to believe her words were jewels and she couldn’t spare any.”
Ames looked up. “Why, no. Think what long letters she writes.”
“Why, yes!” Aunt Daisy retorted. “She writes by the hour about music and German politics and French factory strikes and that tiresome League of Nations; but all she ever says about herself and whether she’s got that Swiss professor wanting to marry her is zero nothing. I bet she worries about Malcolm and won’t tell us. I didn’t like that withered look he had before they went away — kind of dried-up and puffy, too. Malcolm’s getting old, besides, and German brandy’s bad for anybody. He never did like beer. They must be getting near the end of their string. American money goes a long way in Europe these days; but even on the cheap two travelers can’t live there forever on less than six thousand dollars. She’s strung it out long past the year and a half she calculated on; it’s almost two years. I hope they don’t expect to land on my hands when they get back.”
“Mother! Kate told you Mr. Roe’s going to have a place for her.”
“Suppose he does,” Aunt Daisy said. “They’ll have to go somewhere till they can get settled down, won’t they? I merely said I hope they don’t expect to come here to my house. Malcolm may be my own brother; but I couldn’t put up with his coming in at all hours of the night in heaven knows what condition and I certainly wouldn’t be able to have him stay here if he turns out to be really sick — not with all I have on my hands looking after this house. In her latest letters she’s mentioned three times he’s been to a doctor. She never says why or what he’s got, just says the doctor’s helped him and he seems ‘pretty well’. I’ll bet she brings Malcolm Fennigate home an invalid and even if they don’t expect to stay in my house she’ll be thinking I ought to go and spend whole afternoons with him while she’s busy with Henry L. Roe’s office work.”
“Mother, what nonsense! She hasn’t written you anything that even hints Uncle Malcolm’s going to come home an invalid.”
“No, that isn’t her way; but you just wait and see. When I turn out to be right, kindly remember that I saw it all beforehand. Malcolm Fennigate wasn’t a well man when he left here. He’s going to be an invalid when she brings him back, and, in spite of all she knows I’ve got on my hands and your never having a day of health, yourself, Mary, she’ll expect to use us to keep him entertained. You’ll see! She’s got it all planned out in her mind, I tell you. I can read her like a book and you remember what I’m saying!”
. . . Mary did remember, but was too weakly peaceful to say so. Like almost all other habitual prophets, Aunt Daisy couldn’t bear to eat her own words but when any predicted event didn’t come to pass, or happened otherwise than as prophesied, simply altered her memory of the prediction and applauded herself for a new evidence of lifelong foresight.
“I knew exactly what was going to happen,” she said, the day after she had the cablegram from Geneva. She addressed Mary and the elderly cousin, Mrs. Herbert Gilpin. “I told Mary and Ames that this was going to happen four months ago in this very room. I sat in this very chair and told Ames and Mary that if Kate kept Malcolm Fennigate over there any longer he’d never live to get home. We could tell from her letters she was dragging him around from one doctor to another all over Europe, and I came very near writing her, myself, that if she didn’t show sense enough to cut that out and bring him home where he belonged, she’d come back here a full orphan. Nobody ever listens to me, though, until it’s too late. Mary, you remember what I told you and Ames when they were in Munich. Didn’t I say if she didn’t come home I’d never see my brother alive again?”
“Did you, Mother?”
“Did I? What on earth do you mean, asking me did I? Even Ames’ll be able to remember that much. I’ll ask him to your face and if he says he doesn’t — —”
“No, no,” Mary interrupted hurriedly. “I remember you were worried about Uncle Malcolm’s health and — —”
“Worried about it!” Aunt Daisy exclaimed. “I absolutely knew that if she kept on dragging him around among foreign doctors nobody knows anything about he wouldn’t have the faintest chance of getting home alive. That’s precisely what I told Mary and Ames over four months ago, Roberta Gilpin, and you can tell all the family connection I said so.”
“It’s strange,” Mrs. Gilpin said. “Kate’s had so much experience of sickness I should think she’d have brought him back before it happened. Of course she always has liked to have her own way and — —”
“Uncle Malcolm didn’t want to come,” Mary interposed. “She told us so in the last letter we’ve had from her. He wanted to stay over there as long as they could possibly afford it.”
“Pooh!” Aunt Daisy said. “She had Malcolm where he’d say he wanted anything she decided on. Roberta, kindly tell me what you think of her not bringing him home to his own family lot? Did you ever hear anything so crazy? Burying Malcolm Fennigate ‘way over there in the Alps! Never occurred to her that he’s my brother and she might consult my wishes!”
“It might have been too expensive,” Mrs. Gilpin suggested. “Maybe she didn’t have money enough left. Of course she’s got to get home, herself, somehow and —— What on earth?” She referred to a squealing and squawking interruption from outdoors, where young Celia had become active in altercation near one of the open windows.
“It’s that child,” Aunt Daisy explained desperately. “She has fights with boys from that horrible apartment across the street. She gets them to fight one another and then joins in like a wildcat. Oh, me! I can’t hear myself think! Mary, I’m afraid you’ll simply have to — —”
“Yes, yes; I’ll try to stop them.” Mary rose, sighing. “I’ll see if I can’t coax her into the house.”
“ ’Coax’ her in!” Celia’s grandmother said, alone with the guest. “Did you hear that, Roberta? ‘Coax’ her! Nobody has the slightest authority over that child. Mary hasn’t the strength physically or mentally to cope with her, and as for Ames — he’s about as much help in that way as he is in others! I could have stood an ordinary tomboy about the house; but Celia is —— Well, I can only say it’s one of the mysteries of Providence that as peace-loving a woman as I am should have a hellion for a grandchild!”
“Hellion, Daisy?” Mrs. Gilpin’s elderly voice quavered in protest. “Of course we all know you’ve always liked to use startling words sometimes but — —”
“Me? Never! ‘Hellion’s’ an understatement, Roberta. Nobody in this whole family’s ever been able to do a single thing with that child, except Kate Fennigate. Here she is almost eleven years old, and Dr. Powls insisting that Mary must never make the slightest over-exertion, and Celia having to be dragged out of God knows how many fights a week with these rowdy boys that have come to live in the neighborhood! Think of it — Mary, who ought to be receiving the greatest care and attention herself! She really ought to be in the hands of a trained nurse, Roberta, because her life’s just nothing but sacrifice, sacrifice to that husband of hers and this child!”
“Yes,” Mrs. Gilpin assented. “On the other hand, a great many people as frail as Mary seem to live about as long as anybody else and she’s had that fading-away look for quite a number of years now. If you’re worrying about her, though, why don’t you get a trained nurse for her, Daisy?”
“Why? That’s rather a strange question, Roberta! Who’d be paying a nurse’s wages? Ames Lanning?”
“He couldn’t?” Mrs. Gilpin inquired, and added, “I’ve always heard he’s considered the most promising young man in the city.”
“Yes indeedy!” Aunt Daisy uttered a snapping laughter. “ ’Always’ is right! He’s been considered promising so long now it certainly does seem like always. He keeps his wife and child in sustenance and clothes — just barely! I bet there isn’t a trained nurse in the city doesn’t make more than he does.”
“Dear me!” Mrs. Gilpin spoke timidly. “Daisy, I’ve been wondering — I suppose Kate’ll certainly be coming home now. I understand her plans were that she and her father would take an apartment somewhere; but now that he’s gone, where do you suppose she intends to live? Of course these modern girls are dreadfully independent; but I wonder if you’ve thought — —”
“Yes, I have.” Aunt Daisy glanced out of the window; then lowered her voice and became confidential. “I’ve thought about it a great deal because I have exactly the same feeling that you have, Roberta. In spite of all these absurd new modern freedoms there are a great many old citizens of this city, people brought up the right way, who’d be horrified to see a girl member of the Fennigate family living all alone as if she were a man. What’s more, I’m opposed to her going into business, trying to be a typist or secretary or something out at that ordinary old Roe’s factory. I’ll never consent to it.”
“Well, but Daisy — —”
“There’s no ‘but’ to it,” Aunt Daisy said. “She simply can’t be allowed to do it and I want your help to influence her. I want every relative we have to get to work on her the minute she’s back here. I’ve cabled her to come straight to my house when she — —”
“You have? I see. I think that’s the very wisest thing that could be done, Daisy, and very thoughtful of you. You have so much room in this big house she could live here much more happily for herself than anywhere else and — —”
“Certainly she could.” Aunt Daisy’s expression became that of a woman frankly just at all costs. “It’s the right thing to do for her, my own niece; but I don’t claim that I’m not considering others besides, including myself. She’s very practical and would be a great help.”
“Yes, she would so.” Mrs. Gilpin looked thoughtful. “She took care of her mother so long, and now with all the added experience she’s had with poor Malcolm I don’t suppose there could be a professional nurse anywhere that’d be any better. Then, as you say, her influence with Celia and being able to control the child — —”
“I’m going to put her in the next room to Celia, Roberta — a very nice room. Celia still has those nightmares — no wonder, the way she tears round every minute she’s awake! Of course, as I say, Kate’s my dead brother’s only daughter and he’d have a right to reproach me from his grave if I didn’t offer her a home now she has nobody else; but I don’t deny she’ll help to take a load off my shoulders. I’ve had nothing but burdens all my life and I don’t expect to be in this world much longer. Of course she’ll try to manage the whole house and me too; but I won’t mind letting her think she’s doing it. The sooner she comes the better.”
Kate didn’t think so and had no intention of accepting Aunt Daisy’s cabled invitation. More than two months elapsed before a slight and comely figure in black emerged from the railroad station downtown and walked up National Avenue in the smog that gloomed a December morning. The city was at its ugliest. For seven months of the year foliages that screened its architectural inequalities and even somewhat softened its hell-colored signboards had been frosted away, Nature thus leaving multitudinous works of man brazenly exposed, abhorrent to any sensitive eye. Kate Fennigate’s eye, lately come from regions of anciently seasoned harmonies, was a sensitive one and the scene about her as she walked northward from the city’s business heart didn’t please her. She saw alterations, too, not for the better æsthetically, and she had all the discomfiting sensations of a long absentee who returns to find everything uncomfortably both familiar and unfamiliar.
Then why had she come back? Because there’d be a place for her in the Roe Metal Products Corporation? No, she could have made a living elsewhere; the Swiss professor’s sister had wanted her as a colleague to teach English and American history in Lausanne. Kate had come back because this was home and she could never get over knowing that. She had no dwelling-place; but this was home, and the noise and smoke, increased since she’d left, were the well-known adjuncts of well-remembered home. She had the feeling usual in such circumstances that the day upon which she and her father had set forth upon their adventure was long, long ago and yet but yesterday.
The faces about her, downtown, were also familiar-unfamiliar, more American than the faces she’d seen during the day or so she’d stayed in New York. These Midland people were the creatures she best understood and would always best understand of all that walked the earth; but she felt it would take her some time to be one of them again. Her absence had blurred them to her, as it also blurred her old self to her present self. She remembered that on the train, as she’d left here so long ago and so little ago, she’d hoped she’d get over being in love with Ames Lanning. That certainly seemed to be accomplished.
She’d almost forgotten his features, though she was still sure that there was something about his face very kind, able-looking and agreeable; but it was long, long since she’d known herself to be in love with him. She’d thought of him, yes, warmly and affectionately and probably almost every day. She’d thought of him especially when she wrote her letters to Mary, and it was true she’d aimed those letters at him, hoping they’d interest him; but the pictures she had of him in her memory had receded. He’d grown so dim that perhaps — perhaps now when she’d see him again she’d be almost amused to remember the girl-self that had been so unquestioningly in love with him.
She passed the group of coupled brick buildings that had been the Carroll School, and she had a twinge of unexpected sharpness. Across the façade of the middle house there was a long black and gilt signboard, already dingy: “Railroad Men’s Building and Loan Insurance Corp.” Mary had written her that Miss Carroll had moved the school to a wooded region far out, “where everybody that can afford it’s gone to live now”; but the cause of the twinge wasn’t only the sight of the buildings in what seemed their grotesque masquerade. There was one of the “old Carroll girls”, a star pupil in her day, who wouldn’t be visiting the school in its new quarters. Miss Carroll would be better pleased not to be reminded of distressing old questions.
Beyond the shell of the school there were other changes, other houses with signboards upon them, a row or two of new business buildings, “used car” salesrooms, and then, half a block before her, the broad front of Aunt Daisy’s treasure, the Fennigate house — and beyond that, most familiar-unfamiliar of all, the corner she’d turned many thousands of times, the corner of National Avenue and East Cherry Street. She didn’t wish to turn that corner and had no need to; just now she was only going as far as Aunt Daisy’s.
