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

“I wonder,” he said slowly, “how well you understand yourself.”

“I think I do,” she muttered. With a sudden twitching of her lip she looked quickly up at him. “Go on, Allan⁠—let’s talk it all over now if you must!”

“Not if you feel like that,” he said. At his tone of displeasure she caught his hand.

“Yes, yes, I want to! Please!” she cried. “It’s better⁠—really! Believe me, it is⁠—”

He hesitated a moment, his wide generous mouth set hard, and then in a tone as sharp as hers he demanded, “Are you sure you’ll marry me next spring? Are you sure you hope you will next spring? Are you sure this sister of yours in the house, on your nerves day and night, with this blind narrow motherhood, this motherhood which frightens you⁠—isn’t frightening you too much?”

“No⁠—a little⁠—but not too much.” Her deep sweet voice was trembling. “You’re the one who frightens me. If you only knew! When you come like this⁠—with all you’ve done for me back of you⁠—”

“Deborah! Don’t be a fool!”

“Oh, I know you say you’ve done nothing, except what you’ve been glad to do! You love me like that! But it’s just that love! Giving up all your practice little by little, and your reputation uptown⁠—all for the sake of me, Allan, me!”

“You’re wrong,” he replied. “Compared to what I’m getting, I’ve given up nothing! Can’t you see? You’re just as narrow in your school as Edith is right here in her home! You look upon my hospital as a mere annex to your schools, when the truth of it is that the work down there is a chance I’ve wanted all my life! Can’t you understand,” he cried, “that instead of your being in debt to me it’s I who am in debt to you? You’re a suffragist, eh, a feminist⁠—whatever you want to call it! All right! So you want to be equal with man! Then, for God’s sake, why not begin? Feel equal! I’m no annex to you, nor you to me! It has happened, thank God, that our work fits in⁠—each with the other!”

He stopped and stared, seemed to shake himself; he walked the floor. And when he turned back his expression had changed.

“Look here, Deborah,” he asked, with an appealing humorous smile, “will you tell me what I’m driving at?”

Deborah threw back her head and laughed, and her laughter thrilled with relief. “How sure I feel now that I love him,” she thought.

“You’ve proved I owe you nothing!” she cried. “And that men and women of our kind can work on splendidly side by side, and never bother our poor little heads about anything else⁠—even marriage!”

“We will, though!” he retorted. The next moment she was in his arms. “Now, Deborah, listen to reason, child. Why can’t you marry me right away?”

“Because,” she said, “when I marry you I’m going to have you all to myself⁠—for weeks and weeks as we planned before! And afterwards, with a wonderful start⁠—and with the war over, work less hard and the world less dark and gloomy⁠—we’re going to find that at last we can live! But this winter it couldn’t be like that. This winter we’ve got to go on with our work⁠—and without any more silly worries or talk about whether or not we’re in love. For we are!” Her upturned face was close to his, and for some moments nothing was said, “Well?” she asked. “Are you satisfied?”

“No⁠—I want to get married. But it is now a quarter past one. And I’m your physician. Go straight to bed.”

She stopped him a minute at the front door:

“Are you sure, absolutely, you understand?”

He told her he did. But as he walked home he reflected. How tense she had been in the way she had talked. Yes, the long strain was telling. “Why was she so anxious to get me out of the house,” he asked, “when we were alone for the first time in days? And why, if she’s really sure of her love, does she hate the idea that she’s in my debt?”

He walked faster, for the night was cold. And there was a chill, too, in this long waiting game.

Roger heard Deborah come up to bed, and he wondered what they had been talking about. Of the topic he himself had broached⁠—each other, love and marriage?

“Possibly⁠—for a minute or two⁠—but no more,” he grumbled. “For don’t forget there’s work to discuss, there’s that mass meeting still on her mind. And God knows a woman’s mind is never any child’s play. But when you load a mass meeting on top⁠—”

Here he yawned long and noisily. His head ached, he felt sore and weak⁠—“from the evening’s entertainment my other daughter gave me.” No, he was through, he had had enough. They could settle things to suit themselves. Let Edith squander her money on frills, the more expensive the better. Let her turn poor Johnny out of the house, let her give full play to her motherhood. And if that scared Deborah out of marrying, let her stay single and die an old maid. He had worried enough for his family. He wanted a little peace in his house.

Drowsily he closed his eyes, and a picture came into his mind of the city as he had seen it only a few nights before. It had been so cool, so calm and still. At dusk he had been in the building of the great tower on Madison Square; and when he had finished his business there, on an impulse he had gone up to the top, and through a wide low window had stood a few moments looking down. A soft light snow was falling; and from high up in the storm, through the silent whirling flakes, he had looked far down upon lights below, in groups and clusters, dancing lines, between tall phantom buildings, blurred and ghostly, faint, unreal. From all that bustle and fever of life there had risen to him barely a sound. And the