His Family by Ernest Poole (popular ebook readers txt) 📕

meeting of his club of Italian boys. It had been postponed from the evening before. And though Roger, overcome with dismay at having forgotten Edith’s night, apologized profusely, the time-honored weekly game took place no more from that day on.

“Edith’s pretty sore,” said Bruce, who dropped in soon afterwards. “She says Deborah has made your house into an annex to her school.”

Roger smoked in silence. His whole family was about his ears.

“My boy,” he muttered earnestly, “you and I must stick together.”

“We sure must,” agreed his son-in-law. “And what’s more, if we’re to keep the peace, we’ve got to try to put some punch into Deborah’s so-called love affair. She ought to get married and settle down.”

“Yes,” said Roger, dubiously. “Only let’s keep it to ourselves.”

“No chance of that,” was the cheerful reply. “You can’t keep Edith out of it. It would only make trouble in my family.” Roger gave him a pitying look and said,

“Then, for the Lord’s sake, let her in!”

So they took Edith into their councils, and she gave them an indulgent smile.

“Suppose you leave this to me,” she commanded. “Don’t you think I’ve been using my eyes? There’s no earthly use in stepping in now, for Deborah has lost her head. She sees herself a great new woman with a career. But wait till the present flare-up subsides, till the newspapers all drop her and she is thoroughly tired out. Until then, remember, we keep our hands off.”

“Do you think you can?” asked Roger, with a little glimmer of hope.

“I?” she retorted. “Most certainly! I mean to leave her alone absolutely⁠—until she comes to me herself. When she does, we’ll know it’s time to begin.”

“I’m afraid Edith is hurt about something,” said Deborah to her father, about a month after this little talk. “She hasn’t been near us for over three weeks.”

“Let her be!” said Roger, in alarm. “I mean,” he hastily added, “why can’t you let Edith come when she likes? There’s nothing the matter. It’s simply her children⁠—they take up her time.”

“No,” said Deborah calmly, “it’s I. She as good as told me so last month. She thinks I’ve become a perfect fanatic⁠—without a spare moment or thought for my family.”

“Oh, my family!” Roger groaned. “I tell you, Deborah, you’re wrong! Edith’s children are probably sick in bed!”

“Then I’ll go and see,” she answered.

“Something has happened to Deborah,” Edith informed him blithely, over the telephone the next night.

“Has, eh,” grunted Roger.

“Yes, she was here to see me today. And something has happened⁠—she’s changing fast. I felt it in all kinds of ways. She was just as dear as she could be⁠—and lonely, as though she were feeling her age. I really think we can do something now.”

“All right, let’s do something,” Roger growled.

And Edith began to do something. Her hostility to her sister had completely disappeared. In its place was a friendly affection, an evident desire to please. She even drew Laura into the secret, and there was a gathering of the clan. There were consultations in Roger’s den. “Deborah is to get married.” The feeling of it crept through the house. Nothing was said to her, of course, but Deborah was made to feel that her two sisters had drawn close. And their influence upon her choice was more deep and subtle than she knew. For although Roger’s family had split so wide apart, between his three daughters there were still mysterious bonds reaching far back into nursery days. And Deborah in deciding whether to marry Allan Baird was affected more than she was aware by the married lives of her sisters. All she had seen in Laura’s ménage, all that she had ever observed in Edith’s growing family, kept rising from time to time in her thoughts, as she vaguely tried to picture herself a wife and the mother of children.

So the family, with those subtle bonds from the past, began to press steadily closer and closer around this one unmarried daughter, and help her to make up her mind.

XVII

But she did not appear to care to be helped. Nor did Allan⁠—he rarely came to the house, and he went to Edith’s not at all. He was even absent from her Christmas tree for the children, a jolly little festivity which neither he nor Deborah had missed in years.

“What has got into him?” Roger asked. And shortly after Christmas he called the fellow up on the phone. “Drop in for dinner tonight,” he urged. And he added distinctly, “I’m alone.”

“Are you? I’ll be glad to.”

“Thank you, Baird, I want your advice.” And as he hung up the receiver he said, “Now then!” to himself, in a tone of firm decision. But later, as the day wore on, he cursed himself for what he had done. “Don’t it beat the devil,” he thought, “how I’m always putting my foot in it?” And when Baird came into the room that night he loomed, to Roger’s anxious eye, if anything taller than before. But his manner was so easy, his gruff voice so natural, and he seemed to take this little party of two so quietly as a matter of course, that Roger was soon reassured, and at table he and Allan got on even better than before. Baird talked of his life as a student, in Vienna, Bonn and Edinburgh, and of his first struggles in New York. His talk was full of human bits, some tragic, more amusing. And Roger’s liking for the man increased with every story told.

“I asked you here,” he bluntly began, when they had gone to the study to smoke, “to talk to you about Deborah.” Baird gave him a friendly look.

“All right. Let’s talk about her.”

“It strikes me you were right last year,” said Roger, speaking slowly. “She’s already showing the strain of her work. She don’t look to me as strong as she was.”

“She looks to me stronger,” Allan replied. “You know, people fool doctors now and then⁠—and she seems to