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

too, for he had had his own hard day. Pshaw! He got up angrily. Somebody must be genial here. He went into the dining room and poured himself a good stiff drink. Roger had never been much of a drinker. Ever since his marriage, cigars had been his only vice. But of late he had been having curious little sinking spells. They worried him, and he told himself he could not afford to get either too tired or too faint.

Nevertheless, he reflected, it was setting a bad example for George. But glancing into his study he saw that the lad was completely absorbed. With knees drawn up, his long lank form all hunched and huddled on the lounge, hair rumpled, George was reading a book which had a cover of tough gray cloth. At the sight of it his grandfather smiled, for he had seen it once before. Where George had obtained it, the Lord only knew. Its title was “Bulls and Breeding.” A thoroughly practical little book, but nothing for George’s mother to see. As his grandfather entered behind him, the boy looked up with a guilty start, and resumed with a short breath of relief.

Young Elizabeth, too, had a furtive air, for instead of preparing her history lesson she was deep in the evening paper reading about the war abroad. Stout and florid, rather plain, but with a frank, attractive face and honest, clear, appealing eyes, this curious creature of thirteen was sitting firmly in her chair with her feet planted wide apart, eagerly scanning an account of the work of American surgeons in France. And again Roger smiled to himself. (He was feeling so much better now.) So Betsy was still thinking of becoming a surgeon. He wondered what she would take up next. In the past two years in swift succession she had made up her mind to be a novelist, an actress and a women’s college president. And Roger liked this tremendously.

He loved to watch these two in the house. Here again his family was widening out before him, with new figures arising to draw his attention this way and that. But these were bright distractions. He took a deep, amused delight in watching these two youngsters caught between two fires, on the one side their mother and upon the other their aunt; both obviously drawn toward Deborah, a figure who stood in their regard for all that thrilling outside world, that heaving sparkling ocean on which they too would soon embark; both sternly repressing their eagerness as an insult to their mother, whom they loved and pitied so, regarding her as a brave and dear but rapidly ageing creature “well on in her thirties,” whom they must cherish and preserve. They both had such solemn thoughts as they looked at Edith in her chair. But as Roger watched them, with their love and their solemnity, their guilt and their perplexity, with quiet enjoyment he would wait to see the change he knew would come. And it always did. The sudden picking up of a book, the vanishing of an anxious frown, and in an instant their young minds had turned happily back into themselves, into their own engrossing lives, their plans, their intimate dreams and ambitions, all so curiously bound up with memories of small happenings which had struck them as funny that day and at which they would suddenly chuckle aloud.

And this was only one stage in their growth. What would be the next, he asked, and all the others after that? What kind of world would they live in? Please heaven, there would be no wars. Many old things, no doubt, would be changed, by the work of Deborah and her kind⁠—but not too many, Roger hoped. And these young people, meanwhile, would be bringing up children in their turn. So the family would go on, and multiply and scatter wide, never to unite again. And he thought he could catch glimpses, very small and far away but bright as patches of sunlight upon distant mountain tops, into the widening vista of those many lives ahead. A wistful look crept over his face.

“In their lives too we shall be there, the dim strong figures of the past.”

Deborah came into the room, and at once the whole atmosphere changed. Her niece sprang up delightedly.

“Why, Auntie, how lovely you look!” she exclaimed. And Roger eyed Deborah in surprise. Though she did not believe in mourning, she had been wearing dark gowns of late to avoid hurting Edith’s feelings. But tonight she had donned bright colors instead; her dress was as near décolleté as anything that Deborah wore, and there was a band of dull blue velvet bound about her hair.

“Thanks, dearie,” she said, smiling. “Shall we go in to dinner now?” she added to her father. “Edith said not to wait for her⁠—and I’ll have to be off rather early this evening.”

“What is it tonight?” he inquired.

“A big meeting at Cooper Union.”

And at dinner she went on to say that in her five schools the neighborhood clubs had combined to hold this meeting, and she herself was to preside. At once her young niece was all animation.

“Oh, I wish I could go and hear you!” she sighed.

“Afraid you can’t, Betsy,” her aunt replied. And at this, with an instinctive glance toward the door where her mother would soon come in to stop by her mere presence all such conversation, Elizabeth eagerly threw out one inquiry after the other, pell mell.

“How on earth do you do it?” she wanted to know. “How do you get a speech ready, Aunt Deborah⁠—how much of it do you write out ahead? Aren’t you just the least bit nervous⁠—now, I mean⁠—this minute? And how will you feel on the platform? What on earth do you do with your feet?”

As the girl bent forward there with her gaze fixed ardently on her aunt, her grandfather thought in half comic dismay, “Lord, now she’ll want to be a great speaker⁠—like her