His Family

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His Family

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Title: His Family
Author: Ernest Poole
Release Date: December 20, 2004 [EBook #14396] [Date last updated:
April 8, 2005]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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FAMILY ***

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO
DALLAS ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO

HIS FAMILY
BY ERNEST POOLE AUTHOR OF "THE HARBOR"
New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 1917
All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1916 AND 1917 BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1917 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1917.

TO M.A.

HIS FAMILY

HIS FAMILY
CHAPTER I
He was thinking of the town he had known. Not of old New York--he
had heard of that from old, old men when he himself had still been
young and had smiled at their garrulity. He was thinking of a young
New York, the mighty throbbing city to which he had come long ago as

a lad from the New Hampshire mountains. A place of turbulent
thoroughfares, of shouting drivers, hurrying crowds, the crack of whips
and the clatter of wheels; an uproarious, thrilling town of enterprise,
adventure, youth; a city of pulsing energies, the center of a boundless
land; a port of commerce with all the world, of stately ships with snowy
sails; a fascinating pleasure town, with throngs of eager travellers
hurrying from the ferry boats and rolling off in hansom cabs to the
huge hotels on Madison Square. A city where American faces were still
to be seen upon all its streets, a cleaner and a kindlier town, with more
courtesy in its life, less of the vulgar scramble. A city of houses,
separate homes, of quiet streets with rustling trees, with people on the
doorsteps upon warm summer evenings and groups of youngsters
singing as they came trooping by in the dark. A place of music and
romance. At the old opera house downtown, on those dazzling evenings
when as a boy he had ushered there for the sake of hearing the music,
how the rich joy of being alive, of being young, of being loved, had
shone out of women's eyes. Shimmering satins, dainty gloves and little
jewelled slippers, shapely arms and shoulders, vivacious movements,
nods and smiles, swift glances, ripples, bursts of laughter, an exciting
hum of voices. Then silence, sudden darkness--and music, and the
curtain. The great wide curtain slowly rising....
But all that had passed away.
Roger Gale was a rugged heavy man not quite sixty years of age. His
broad, massive features were already deeply furrowed, and there were
two big flecks of white in his close-curling, grayish hair. He lived in a
narrow red brick house down on the lower west side of the town, in a
neighborhood swiftly changing. His wife was dead. He had no sons, but
three grown daughters, of whom the oldest, Edith, had been married
many years. Laura and Deborah lived at home, but they were both out
this evening. It was Friday, Edith's evening, and as was her habit she
had come from her apartment uptown to dine with her father and play
chess. In the living room, a cheerful place, with its lamp light and its
shadows, its old-fashioned high-back chairs, its sofa, its book cases, its
low marble mantel with the gilt mirror overhead, they sat at a small
oval table in front of a quiet fire of coals. And through the smoke of his

cigar Roger watched his daughter.
Edith had four children, and was soon to have another. A small demure
woman of thirty-five, with light soft hair and clear blue eyes and limbs
softly rounded, the contour of her features was full with approaching
maternity, but there was a decided firmness in the lines about her little
mouth. As he watched her now, her father's eyes, deep set and gray and
with signs of long years of suffering in them, displayed a grave
whimsical wistfulness. For by the way she was playing the game he
saw how old she thought him. Her play was slow and absent-minded,
and there came long periods when she did not make a move. Then she
would recall herself and look up with a little affectionate smile that
showed