His Family | Page 7

you
know what we're going to do some day? We're going to put the rat in
the school," Deborah said impatiently. "We're going to take a boy like
George and study him till we think we know just what interests him
most. And if in his case it's animals, we'll have a regular zoo in school.
And for other boys we'll have other things they really want to know
about. And we'll keep them until five o'clock--when their mothers will
have to drag them away." Her father looked bewildered.
"But arithmetic, my dear."
"You'll find they'll have learned their arithmetic without knowing it,"
Deborah answered.
"Sounds a bit wild," murmured Roger. Again to his mind came the
picture of hordes of little Italians and Jews. "My dear, if I had your
children to teach, I don't think I'd add a zoo," he said. And with a
breath of discomfort he turned back to his reading. He knew that he
ought to question her, to show an interest in her work. But he had a
deep aversion for those millions of foreign tenement people, always
shoving, shoving upward through the filth of their surroundings. They
had already spoiled his neighborhood, they had flowed up like an ocean
tide. And so he read his paper, frowning guiltily down at the page. He
glanced up in a little while and saw Deborah smiling across at him,
reading his dislike of such talk. The smile which he sent back at her
was half apologetic, half an appeal for mercy. And Deborah seemed to
understand. She went into the living room, and there at the piano she
was soon playing softly. Listening from his study, again the feeling
came to him of her fresh and abundant vitality. He mused a little
enviously on how it must feel to be strong like that, never really tired.
And while her father thought in this wise, Deborah at the piano, leaning
back with eyes half closed, could feel her tortured nerves relax, could
feel her pulse stop throbbing so and the dull aching at her temples little

by little pass away. She played like this so many nights. Soon she
would be ready for sleep.
* * * * *
After she had gone to bed, Roger rose heavily from his chair. By long
habit he went about the house trying the windows and turning out lights.
Last he came to the front door. There were double outer doors with a
ponderous system of locks and bolts and a heavy chain. Mechanically
he fastened them all; and putting out the light in the hall, in the
darkness he went up the stairs. He could so easily feel his way. He put
his hand lightly, first on the foot of the banister, then on a curve in it
halfway up, again on the sharper curve at the top and last on the knob
of his bedroom door. And it was as though these guiding objects came
out to meet him like old friends.
In his bedroom, while he slowly undressed, his glance was caught by
the picture upon the wall opposite his bed, a little landscape poster
done in restful tones of blue, of two herdsmen and their cattle far up on
a mountainside in the hour just before the dawn, tiny clear-cut
silhouettes against the awakening eastern sky. So immense and still,
this birth of the day--the picture always gave him the feeling of life
everlasting. Judith his wife had placed it there.
From his bed through the window close beside him he looked up at the
cliff-like wall of the new apartment building, with tier upon tier of
windows from which murmurous voices dropped out of the dark: now
soft, now suddenly angry, loud; now droning, sullen, bitter, hard; now
gay with little screams of mirth; now low and amorous, drowsy sounds.
Tier upon tier of modern homes, all overhanging Roger's house as
though presently to crush it down.
But Roger was not thinking of that. He was thinking of his children--of
Edith's approaching confinement and all her anxious hunting about to
find what was best for her family, of Bruce and the way he was driving
himself in the unnatural world downtown where men were at each
other's throats, of Deborah and that school of hers in the heart of a vast
foul region of tenement buildings swarming with strange, dirty little

urchins. And last he thought of Laura, his youngest daughter, wild as a
hawk, gadding about the Lord knew where. She even danced in
restaurants! Through his children he felt flowing into his house the
seething life of this new town. And drowsily he told himself he must
make a real effort, and make it soon, to know his family better. For in
spite of the