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

have taken a fresh start. I feel she may go on for years.” Roger was silent a moment, chagrined and disappointed.

“Have you had a good chance to watch her?” he asked.

“Yes, and I’m watching her still,” said Baird. “I see her down there at the school. She tells me you’ve been there yourself.”

“Yes,” said Roger, determinedly, “and I mean to keep on going. I’m trying not to lose hold of her,” he added with harsh emphasis. Baird turned and frankly smiled at him.

“Then you have probably seen,” he replied, “that to keep any hold at all on her, you must make up your mind as I have done that, strength or no strength, this job of hers is going to be a life career. When a woman who has held a job without a break for eleven years can feel such a flame of enthusiasm, you can be pretty sure, I think, it is the deepest part of her. At least I feel that way,” he said. “And I believe the only way to keep near her⁠—for the present, anyhow⁠—is to help her in her work.”

When Baird had gone, Roger found himself angry.

“I’m not in the habit, young man,” he thought, “of throwing my daughter at gentlemen’s heads. If you feel as calm and contented as that you can go to the devil! Far be it from me to lift a hand! In fact, as I come to think of it, you would probably make her a mighty poor husband!” He worked himself into quite a rage. But an hour later, when he had subsided, “Hold on,” he thought. “Am I right about this? Is the man as contented as he talks? No, sir, not for a minute he isn’t! But what can he do? If he tried making love to Deborah he’d simply be killing his chances. Not the slightest doubt in the world. She can’t think of anything but her career. Yes, sir, when all’s said and done, to marry a modern woman is no child’s play, it means thought and care. And A. Baird has made up his mind to it. He has made up his mind to marry her by playing a long waiting game. He’s just slowly and quietly nosing his way into her school, because it’s her life. And a mighty shrewd way of going about it. You don’t need any help from me, my friend; all you need is to be let alone.”

In talks at home with Deborah, and in what he himself observed at school, Roger began to get inklings of “A. Baird’s long waiting game.” He found that several months before Allan had offered to start a free clinic for mothers and children in connection with the school, and that he alone had put it through, with only the most reluctant aid and gratitude from Deborah⁠—as though she dreaded something. Baird took countless hours from his busy uptown practice; he hurt himself more than once, in fact, by neglecting rich patients to do this work. Where a sick or pregnant mother was too poor to carry out his advice, he followed her into her tenement home, sent one of his nurses to visit her, and even gave money when it was needed to ease the strain of her poverty until she should be well and strong. Soon scores of the mothers of Deborah’s children were singing the praises of Doctor Baird.

Then he began coming to the house.

“I was right,” thought Roger complacently.

He laid in a stock of fine cigars and some good port and claret, too; and on evenings when Baird came to dine, Roger by a genial glow and occasional jocular ironies would endeavor to drag the talk away from clinics, adenoids, children’s teeth, epidemics and the new education. But no joke was so good that Deborah could not promptly match it with some amusing little thing which one of her children had said or done. For she had a mother’s instinct for bragging fondly of her brood. It was deep, it was uncanny, this queer community motherhood.

“This poor devil,” Roger thought, with a pitying glance at Baird, “might just as well be marrying a widow with three thousand brats.”

But Baird did not seem in the least dismayed. On the contrary, his assurance appeared to be deepening every week, and with it Deborah’s air of alarm. For his clinic, as it swiftly grew, he secured financial backing from his rich women patients uptown, many of them childless and only too ready to respond to the appeals he made to them. And one Saturday evening at the house, while dining with Roger and Deborah, he told of an offer he had had from a wealthy banker’s widow to build a maternity hospital. He talked hungrily of all it could do in cooperation with the school. He said nothing of the obvious fact that it would require his whole time, but Roger thought of that at once, and by the expression on Deborah’s face he saw she was thinking, too.

He felt they wanted to be alone, so presently he left them. From his study he could hear their voices growing steadily more intense. Was it all about work? He could not tell. “They’ve got working and living so mixed up, a man can’t possibly tell ’em apart.”

Then his daughter was called to the telephone, and Allan came in to bid Roger good night. And his eyes showed an impatience he did not seem to care to hide.

“Well?” inquired Roger. “Did you get Deborah’s consent?”

“To what?” asked Allan sharply.

“To your acceptance,” Roger answered, “of the widow’s mite.” Baird grinned.

“She couldn’t help herself,” he said.

“But she didn’t seem to like it, eh⁠—”

“No,” said Baird, “she didn’t.” Roger had a dark suspicion.

“By the way,” he asked in a casual tone, “what’s this philanthropic widow like?”

“She’s sixty-nine,” Baird answered.

“Oh,” said Roger. He smoked for a time, and sagely added, “My daughter’s a queer woman, Baird⁠—she’s modern, very modern. But she’s still a woman, you