HER SON'S WIFE

Front matter

Stockton, ARS

a,

ia aa ee

Part I Ceapter 1]

o the downcast little girl murmuring earnestly, “But,

Teacher, I never meant to—’” Mrs. Bascomb said, with upraised forefinger, “Sh! Didn’t I hear somebody knocking?”

The group of plainly dressed women and children standing in the aisle to wait their turn, stirred, and one of the women said eagerly, propitiatingly, “Yes, Mis’ Bascomb. Yes, ma’am. I been hearing somebody knock, quite a while back.”

Mrs. Bascomb rewarded her with a faint smile, and towards the door said musically, on two notes, “Come ... in.”

A slight change in the expression of the waiting women showed that they recognized the teacher’s accent as different from the one they would have used. An even slighter shade of satisfaction in Mrs. Bascomb’s face showed that she knew they had so recognized it. The door opened. A tall, fairhaired, mild-eyed girl looked in.

“Oh, come right in, Margaret,” said Mrs. Bascomb, “I won’t be long.”

The women in the aisle looked at each other, understanding that the last phrase was intended for them.

The girl glanced at them. “I’d better go back to my own room,” she said.

“No, no,” said Mrs. Bascomb easily, again on two notes, “no need for that. Just sit down and wait. If you can crowd yourself into a fifth-grade seat?”

With a docile smile the newcomer sat down, her slim, long body drolly twisted between a low seat and desk. She put her chin on her hands and settled herself to observe a crosssection of the older woman’s life. A faint consciousness of this colored the wistfulness in Mrs. Bascomb’s face.

From the back of the room, the girl could hear but one side of the dialogues which followed, and see only Mrs. Bascomb’s expression. The others presented their backs to her, and their voices came to her only as a badly articulated mumble, against which Mrs. Bascomb’s refined speech chimed out crisply. It was like hearing a telephone conversation.

“But Annie dear, if you hadn’t intended to, you wouldn’t have struck Isabelle. It can’t be true when you say you didn’t mean to. We only do what we mean to. Somewhere in your heart there must have been anger with Isabelle. And anger is a poison. You must put it right out of your life, or it will make you do worse things than hitting a little schoolmate. Isn’t that so, Mrs. Dempsey?”

A pause for Mrs, Dempsey’s murmured answer.

Then the sweet, rather melancholy voice again, “Yes, of course it is hard. Anything worth doing is hard. But it is perfectly possible. I always say to young people that if they will fill their lives with beautiful thoughts, the evil ones will have no chance. Now, I’m not going to punish Annie. I don’t believe in punishments. I just want her to think over what I have said, and to write out twenty times and bring to school tomorrow, this sentence, ‘I love Isabelle and will make her my friend.’ ”

A murmur from Mrs. Dempsey, not quite so inaudible, of which the words, “That darned mean kid,” were distinguishable. She was interrupted by Mrs. Bascomb’s voice saying gently, “Oh, yes, she can if she tries. I always say there is Something to love in every one. And if we look for it, we can bring it out. That’s a lesson Annie must learn and it’s every bit as important as the multiplication table.”

As the unpunished Annie and her mother moved forward, Mrs. Bascomb’s eyes for an instant sought those of the girl at the back of the room. Pleasant messages of admiration and acknowledgment were exchanged while the next group came forward to the teacher’s table. It was with a complete change of expression that Mrs. Bascomb transferred her attention to the shabby little boy and the small, bent, old woman.

A mumble of two voices together, broken by Mrs. Bascomb’s voice, reasonable, quietly ironical, “I believe I could understand you better, if you took turns in saying what it is you want me to hear.” é

An ungraceful silence, each waiting for the other.

The clear voice again, with a little impatience, “Well, Michael—”

The little boy’s voice, apologetic, ashamed. Then the old woman, leaning forward, talking in a still lower tone, trying to convey something without saying it. An embarrassed shuffling of the little boy’s feet.

Mrs. Bascomb’s voice, round and full with reproach, “But where is Michael’s mother?”

The old woman leaning still farther forward over the Sabie laying a shaking, withered hand on the row of books standing at the edge. The little boy hanging his head very low. From the two silent women, left standing in the aisle, ‘an emanation of comprehension. They looked down at the floor and away, as if to show they were not listening.

Mrs. Bascomb’s voice, grave and rich, “But Mrs. Malone, a wiife’s place is with her husband, always. Marriage is a sacred thing. You can’t solve problems by running away from them. When people marry, they take on certain responsibilities, and just because things turn out to be harder than they thought, they have no right to. . .”

The old woman’s voice, very low, in a brief statement.

Mrs. Bascomb’s again, shocked, “Oh, that was much too young to marry! What makes parents allow such marriages? But even so, there is always some way of arranging things, if the people concerned really try.”

At this the old woman’s back became agitated, less placating, and although very much bent, no longer so respectful. It shook with the energy of what she now began to say. Her voice carried even to the back of the room in disjointed phrases, snatches of description. . . . “Grabbed up a poker and went for her. . . . Put her out of the house at one o’clock in the morning and snow on the... The neighbors had to come in and... Less than three weeks after Michael was born, didn’t he . . .”

Her voice was shrill, her accent vulgar—the accent of one used to coarse words. She struck the tops of the standing books with her knotty old hands.

The little boy’s hanging fingers twitched nervously, his loosened shoulders and knees made him look lower and smaller than ever. The women in the aisle were listening now, greedily, humanly.

Mrs. Bascomb drew herself back. An expression of energy came into her face which for the moment did not look in the least wistful, but masterful. She tapped commandingly on her desk. ‘There is nothing to be gained by going into unpleasant details in public, Mrs. Malone. None of this concerns me. I simply wished to tell you that Michael must have some quiet place in which to do his home-work, because if he does not do neater work than of late I shall be obliged to have him put back a grade.”’ She paused to let this threat sink in, and went on with finality, “I merely thought it would be kinder to warn you beforehand, and give you a chance to make good.”

By the turn of her phrase, by gathering together some loose papers on her desk, by shifting in her chair and looking past the excited old woman to the next one in line, by a certain expression of her mouth and chin, she conveyed as though by a push on Mrs. Malone’s back the fact that her interview was at an end.

The old woman stopped short, her lips still moving. She caught her breath, fumbled an instant with the fastenings of her cloak, looked around her vaguely, looked once more at her grandson’s teacher, and taking his hand made her way to the door, dragging her feet. As they passed outside in the hall, a faint sound of repressed weeping from the little boy could be heard.

Mrs. Bascomb glanced at the young girl, and shook her head with a resigned gesture.

The next woman in line, a thick-waisted blonde with a flaxen-haired little girl beside her, stepped forward, but as she opened her mouth to speak, the door was pushed ajar and a pretty woman in a handsome velvet cloak made a rustling entrance. “Oh, I’m so glad to find you still here, Mrs. Bascomb,”’ she said exuberantly, “I was so afraid I’d be too late. How do you do? [I haven’t laid eyes on you since the last meeting of the Bridge Club. How splendidly you’re looking! But you always do. My husband often says to me that it doesn’t seem possible that both he and I went to school to you, and you looking just the same now as you did then. I declare I’ve got more wrinkles this minute than you have. But I’m worried into wrinkles. About our Freddie. That’s what I wanted to see you about today. Freddie’s arithmetic. If we...”

As she talked, her eyes had roved impartially and unseeingly over the desks and chairs and walls and waiting women. But she now caught sight of the girl at the back of the room, and recognized that there was another person in sight. “Oh, hello there, Margaret Hill. What’s a first-grade teacher doing up on this floor?” she cried gayly.

Even as she spoke, her face and voice were colored by a recollection of the probable reason for the girl’s presence. It made her look good-naturedly mischievous; and it made the girl blush, not displeased.

She answered with composure, but with some self-consciousness, “How do you do, Mrs. Marvin?”

Mrs. Bascomb smiled faintly, not annoyed by the unspoken implication which had passed between the two women. “I’m alone for a few days, you know. Ralph has gone over to Harristown to see about some work for his summer vacation. And I asked Margaret to have supper with me.”

“Oh, yes, I see/’”’ said Mrs. Marvin with an arch glance at Margaret. “Your Ralph graduates from the University this coming June, doesn’t he? Mercy! How time flies! It doesn’t seem possible he’s old enough to graduate. But of course, when you come to count up—I was in the Eighth Grade, I remember, when he was a cunning little tyke in the First.”

“Ralph was born in ’87,” said his mother. “He was only three years old then. He was too young to come to school at all. But of course I had nobody at home to leave him with.”

The phrase was spoken with a drooping cadence, to which Mrs. Marvin answered sympathetically, “Yes, now that I have children of my own, I often wonder how you ever managed, left all alone when Ralph was little. Goodness me! It’s all I can do to keep track of mine, and me with nothing else to do, and a husband to back me up. How you ever took care of Ralph and earned the living too! But of course Ralph was always such a sweet little fellow. He never made you any trouble, I don’t suppose. Still I guess that was because you knew how to manage him so he wouldn’t. I’m not so smart, I must say. I never can get Freddie to mind me, the way Ralph always minded you... all you ever had to do was to look real hard at him. Gracious! I tell Freddie’s papa, often, I could look my head off at Freddie and he’d never even know it. Ralph always used to have his eyes on your face, waiting to see what you wanted him to do. What a lovely head of curls he used to have, too. I wish our Freddie’s was like that. His is just as straight! And stringy, too. No matter what I put on it.”

It had cost Mrs. Bascomb no effort whatever to listen to all this, and now, very favorably disposed towards Freddie and his arithmetic, she said invitingly, “Was there something I could do for you?”

At this, the stoutish woman with the little girl, who had been submissively waiting, stepped back and disappeared from sight, until the matter of Freddie’s arithmetic had been discussed in detail and settled and until Mrs. Marvin had made all her last cheery, chatty farewells.

When the door finally closed on her, the waiting woman once more became visible and once more took her place before the teacher’s desk. Over her head Mrs, Bascomb glanced at the clock, but her tone was carefully patient as she asked, “What was it, Mrs. Langwetter?”

Mrs. Langwetter hastily laid a murmured petition before the woman at the desk, who considered it, looking down at her white hands. Then, indulgently, “Why, yes, Mrs. Langwetter, I think I could allow that if Greta would be sure to , bring in all her written work.”

Mrs. Langwetter confounded herself in thanks and moved on.

Mrs. Bascomb turned her eyes on the last woman, who had been waiting from the first. “Mrs. Armstrong, could you come another day, just as well?” she asked persuasively. “I have a great deal I want to talk to you about. Jamie’s writing needs attention, and his reading. I want him to do some oral reading at home in the evenings. It’s rather long to explain, and I have been so much delayed this afternoon. I feel very tired. I’m not very strong, you know.” She added with the air of leaving it entirely to the other to decide, “Of course, if it is just as convenient for you.”

Mrs. Armstrong hastened to say that she could just as well come another day; that it was mo trouble at all; that she was so anxious to have Jamie get on well at school, and his papa was, too; and they were so grateful to Mrs. Bascomb for the interest she took in him; and of course if there was anything they could do at home to...

Over her head Mrs. Bascomb glanced fleetingly at the clock. Mrs. Armstrong lost the thread of what she was saying, not very well in hand at best, glanced hastily around her as if looking for something, seemed to remember that there was nothing she need look for, seized Jamie by the hand, and nodding and smiling anxiously, got herself out of the room, murmuring incoherencies about being so much obliged to Mrs. Bascomb for taking an interest in Jamie.

As the door closed, Mrs. Bascomb drew a long breath and relaxed in her chair, looking expectantly at the waiting girl.

Margaret wriggled herself out of her cramped seat and came at once to the desk. “Oh, Mrs. Bascomb, how tired you must be!” she said intensely. “All this after your day of teaching! How do you stand it, frail as you are? But how perfectly wonderful you are with them. It’s an object lesson to see you. But I could teach for years and never learn how to take each one in just the right way, as you do. It was wonderful!”

“You dear girl,” murmured Mrs. Bascomb. She put her left hand to her forehead as though her head ached, but she looked up into the girl’s face with a brave smile which spoke of weariness conquered.

Chapter II

ALFWAY down the hall Mrs. Bascomb stopped. “Oh, I H mustn’t forget to call up Hammond and Babcock. They are going to send a man to fix the plumbing in my bathroom this afternoon. I was to telephone as I started home so that they’d know I’d be there to let him in.”

She disappeared into the booth in the office, leaving Margaret to stand at the window, staring down at the black-beetle tops of the automobiles parked up and down Main Street, two stories below her. In spite of the muffling of the booth’s double door, the sound of indignant expostulation soon made itself heard, so that the girl had her sympathy ready when the door was flung open and Mrs. Bascomb, ruffled and resentful, stepped out.

“They say they ‘Zaven’t any man to send this afternoon’!” she announced, giving an angry caricature of the presumably nonchalant accent at the other end of the line. “Just like that! No excuses! No apologies! When they’ve promised and promised to send somebody!”

Margaret drooped under the sternness of Mrs. Bascomb’s look on her. She had, of course, no connection with the missing plumber, but her certainty of this was not enough to protect her from that responsibility for the world in general and its mismanagement of which Mrs. Bascomb’s eyes accused her,

“Tt’s simply dreadful!” She hastily proffered the most emphatic superlative she could think of. “It’s simply dreadful how they break their promises.”

But she had not been superlative enough. ‘“Dreadful’s no word for it!” said Mrs. Bascomb severely, rebuking her for lukewarmness. “People nowadays have no conscience. They’ll say anything!”

“Ts it something very serious the matter with your plumbing?” asked Margaret, casting about for the right thing to say. She was instantly aware that she had said the wrong one.

Mrs. Bascomb turned away without answering, as if the question were too trivial to consider.

Margaret followed her out meekly, and walked down the hall after her, trying to guess from the look of her back whether her indignation had cooled down enough for a new topic to be safe. Their footsteps echoed hollowly in the afterschool emptiness of the halls. At the head of the stairs, Margaret lengthened her step and overtook her companion, casting a cautious, practiced look of inquiry into her face. She saw nothing in it now but the usual fatigued resignation, and ventured to bring out shyly, “Have you any news from Ralph? I haven’t heard from him, myself ... not even the comic post-card he threatened to send to me here at the school, to shock Miss Latham.”

The moment she mentioned the comic post-card she was sorry. Mrs. Bascomb had no taste for jokes and her patient manner of listening to pleasantries took away all their savor. Margaret hoped she would not ask, “Which comic card?”

She did not. She also agreed tacitly to let the subject be changed, and to permit the recreant plumber to drop out of sight.

“No, I haven’t heard from Ralph, either,” she said, snapping the wrist of one glove shut and beginning to put on the other. “He'll be back so soon he probably didn’t think it worth while to write. He had decided, you know, that if he didn’t secure the promise of a position with the telephone company for this summer, he wasn’t going to stay in Harristown to try for another. His University classes begin again on Monday, you know.”

“Oh, I didn’t really expect him to write,” said Margaret disclaimingly. A door, in the basement two stories below them, opened with a crash, and confused voices burst up towards them, mingled with the sound of loud, unrestrained weeping.

“Oh, dear!” said Mrs. Bascomb, stopping short and looking alarmed. “What do you suppose is the matter now? I can’t stand anything else /”

Some one came bounding up the basement stairs, three steps at atime. A tall, raw-boned, wild-eyed boy it was, who, hearing them above him, stopped, leaned out over the railing and glared up to see who they were.

When he recognized Mrs. Bascomb, he cried loudly in a shaking voice, ‘“‘Say, are there any teachers left in the building? Miss Plummer? Mrs. Jeffries? May Monaghan has just heard her mother had to be taken to the hospital this afternoon, and she’s carrying on dreadfully. We don’t know what to do with her.”

Mrs. Bascomb looked relieved. ‘Yes, yes, I’m sure that Miss Plummer is still in her room,” she said hastily, beginning to move on down the stairs. “I saw her there with a lot of children as we passed just now.”

The boy leaped up past them, his face white, his eyes outrunning his feet. From the depths, the hysteric cries rose up louder and louder.

The two women hurried down the stairs and out into the street, shutting the door of the building behind them with relief.

“I suppose I ought to have gone to try to quiet her, myself,” said Mrs. Bascomb, looking disturbed, “and if there hadn’t been some one else in the building, of course I would. But it seems as though I’d had my share this afternoon, with that dreadful old Mrs. Malone shouting and making such a scene. And Miss Plummer is so good with that sort of person. She doesn’t seem to feel things as I do. It sets me all trembling to be with people who have lost their self-control, as those big Trish girls do, when they scream and take on. And there’s nothing anybody can do for her, after all. Miss Plummer WA, Oe

The girl broke in, leaning towards her fondly. “You ought to be protected against that sort of thing, always,” she said. “People not so sensitive as you, are the ones who should . . .”

“I know it’s a weakness of character,” said Mrs. Bascomb with a sigh, “but it’s the way I’m made. I just can’t help it.’ She caught sight of her reflection in a window as they passed, and pushed her hat slightly more forward.

The girl asked with eager sympathy, “How do you do anyway, these days, Mrs. Bascomb? I’ve been worrying about those sleepless nights.”

“T’m not troubled so much with sleeplessness now,” Mrs. Bascomb measured her words with the care of a scientist conveying exact information about important natural phenomena, “although I never have a really good night. But lately I’ve had another trouble. It starts with a heavy feeling, here”— she laid her gloved hand on her right side—“and after that come shooting pains that run clear up to my shoulder. Sometimes when I wake in the morning, I have scarcely strength enough to crawl out of bed. But of course .. .”

They were turning away from Main Street when she began this report. They were many blocks further along, very near to her own street, when she finished it, saying bravely, “But I don’t suppose it’s very serious. Just something else for me to live through.”

“TY should certainly see a doctor,” said Margaret.

“Oh, Dr. Dewey never does anything for you unless you have a broken leg.”

“Why don’t you try this new Westopractor?”

“T haven’t heard anything about him. Who is he?”

“A youngish man. Dr. Pell. Just moved into the Cheney Block. They say he’s wonderful. The new modern treatments, you know. Only better. Partly bones and partly complexes.”

“Pell?” asked Mrs. Bascomb. “Did you say Pell? What are his initials?”

“J don’t remember. Oh, yes, Dr. M. Buckingham Pell.”

“Why, for mercy’s sakes, he must be that little gutter-snipe of a Maurice Pell who gave me so much trouble, when I had the fourth grade, years ago.”

The girl instantly threw over Dr. Pell. ‘Aren’t you wonderful!” she cried. “Everybody always says there’s no fooling you about anybody in town. You’ve had them all in your room in school. And with your memory .. .”

“Td not be likely to forget that worthless little liar! I never saw such an unreliable child. The word of truth wasn’t in him.”

The girl had not the slightest interest in Dr. Pell, a fact which now made itself impalpably felt in spite of her effort to continue her conscientious interest in anything Ralph’s mother might say.

“I certainly hope you find some doctor who can help you,” she murmured.

“Oh, Dll get along,’ said Mrs. Bascomb, evidently thinking of something else.

There was a long silence, through which the girl felt her companion finding her way through associations of ideas which Margaret could not follow, to quite another plane from the one on which they had been talking. She felt the silence filled by something grave and deep—and remote from her. Glancing timidly sideways, she knew that Mrs. Bascomb was thinking of her husband. Margaret had seen before that brooding stillness in the older woman’s face, and knew that nothing brought it there save a thought of the man dead for so long, but not forgotten, who had been Ralph’s father.

The girl shivered responsively. She wished she dared ask Mrs. Bascomb about her husband, get her to talk freely of her short, lost happiness, and her long sorrow. She felt that such talk would be a draught for the thirst of her own heart. The little surface things of life seemed so dry and trivial to her now, to her heart filled as it was with hope and doubt.

She felt an inner trembling, and presently she knew that, through her silence, something of her emotion was being communicated to the other woman. As they turned into the pretty, well-kept yard, in front of the white, green-shuttered cottage, Mrs. Bascomb took the girl’s hand in hers for an instant.

But, as they took off their hats and set about getting supper, they talked only about the little surface things of life. From the blue-and-white dining-room, where Margaret was setting the table for two, to the white enameled kitchen where Mrs. Bascomb in a fresh cretonne apron was managing oil stove and fireless cooker, there was an interchange of sober, housewifely talk.

“You'll find the forks in the upper left-hand drawer, Margaret.”

“Oh, Mrs. Bascomb, how perfectly sweet the drawer looks! It’s a picture! The forks all laid together and the spoons cheek to cheek.”

“Yes, I always think that the moment’s extra time taken for real order is well spent. Do you like your potatoes mashed or fried?”

“Oh, mashed!’

“T’m glad to hear you say so. We Americans eat too much fried food, I always say.”

“Where shall I find the salt-cellars, Mrs. Bascomb? Oh, yes, I see them, the little old darlings. How ever do you dare use such valuable antiques?”

“That’s the advantage, I always say, of doing your own work. You do dare use your nice things. Those salt-cellars were part of my grandmother’s wedding outfit. She was a Massachusetts Peabody. The buffet is one of the things that came down to me from her family. Have you about finished, Margaret? For you’d have time to run up to the bathroom and wash your hands before I start to serve. Open the two little white doors on the west wall, and you'll find the clean towels. I hope you won’t mind that my toilet soap is ali scentless.”

“Qh, Mrs. Bascomb, I loathe perfumed soap.”

And yet, as they settled their ladylike persons at opposite ends of the daintily set table, they smiled intimately across it at each other as though they had been exchanging confidences.

They went on chatting in the vein which talk always took with Mrs. Bascomb—of the way the janitor at school oiled the floors; of Margaret’s novice work down in the first-grade room; of queer old Miss Plummer and her awful hats (“Though she is very good-hearted, we must always remember that, I tell people”); of how hard Margaret found it to “handle parents” (“My dear girl, just remember that all parents are afraid the teacher will be hard on their particular child. You’ve only to make them feel that, once or twice, and you have no further trouble with parents!”); of a new method of teaching fractions which was being tried out in Newark, New Jersey; of the engagement of a schoolmate of Margaret’s and the linen she was beginning to collect; of a spring lecture course which the Community Club was arranging because the winter lectures had been such a success. Mrs. Bascomb asked if Margaret had heard whether this new series was to be on household decoration, or the commission form of municipal government. She had heard that both subjects were under consideration. They were sure to be splendid, in any case, because the Community Club got such fine speakers. “I never miss one,” said Mrs. Bascomb.

They even talked about the movies, and Mrs. Bascomb confessed to a weakness for them. “But then, I think it is good for a teacher to get out a good deal in the evening,” she said. “‘There’s so much in life that’s sad, one needs to forget it all, sometimes. And life often looks very empty when you’re past forty. I always try to get out three evenings every week, as a matter of principle, even when I’m very tired. It keeps you up with the times.”

Margaret spoke of music, of a series of concerts to be given, and Mrs. Bascomb acquiesced, “Oh, yes, of course I like music, too. Very much. It’s so pleasant of an evening, especially when made by your friends at home. I often say I like it better than cards. Though I must say I do like a good game of bridge.”

But Margaret felt that they were using this chat as a boy whirls his sling shot around and around his head—the better to loose his stone. After the meal was finished, the dishes dispatched, and the fern-dish set back on the polished old mahogany of the dining-room table, she knew that the real moment had come at last.

Although it was still early in April, it was warm enough to sit out for a time on the porch, where Mrs. Bascomb sank down in a wicker armchair, and Margaret coiled herself on a cushion, her arm over the other woman’s knees.

“How just right this porch and its furnishings are!” she said. “It looks so like you. All the house does.”

“Yes, it’s been a dear little house for Ralph and me, a real expression of our personality. That is what a home should be. Every littlest thing in a house is so precious when it is a part of your past.”

“Yes, yes,’ murmured the girl in perfect although somewhat preoccupied accord with anything Mrs. Bascomb could say. She was not thinking of the house at all.