Half Portions | Page 7

listened for the reassuring sound of Adele's spoons and
plates in the kitchen. She came forward. "Now, listen--" she began.
"I love him," said Julia Gold, dramatically. "I love him!"
Except that it was very white and, somehow, old looking, Aunt Sophy's
face was as benign as always. "Now, look here, Julia, my girl. That isn't
love and you know it. I'm an old maid, but I know what love is when I
see it. I'm ashamed of you, Julia. Sensible woman like you. Hugging
and kissing a boy like that, and old enough to be his mother, pretty
near."
"Now, look here, Aunt Soph! I'm fond of you but if you're going to talk
that way--Why, she's wonderful. She's taught me what it means to
really--"
"Oh, my land!" Aunt Sophy sat down, looking, suddenly, very sick and
old.
And then, from the kitchen, Adele's clear young voice: "Heh! What's
the idea! I'm not going to do all the work. Where's everybody?"

Aunt Sophy started up again. She came up to them and put a hand--a
capable, firm, steadying hand on the arm of each. The woman drew
back but the boy did not.
"Will you promise me not to do anything for a week? Just a week! Will
you promise me? Will you?"
"Are you going to tell Father?"
"Not for a week if you'll promise not to see each other in that week. No,
I don't want to send you away, Julia, I don't want to--You're not a bad
girl. It's just--he's never had--at home they never gave him a chance.
Just a week, Julia. Just a week, Eugene. We can talk things over then."
Adele's footsteps coming from the kitchen.
"Quick!"
"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 God! 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 recumbent 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 Sturdy 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