A Good Woman (Bromfield)/Part 3/Chapter 27
While Philip sat in the dust and soot of the dead stable, his father waited for him at the flat. He danced the twins for a time on his knee, and set them crowing by giving a variety of imitations of birds and animals which he had learned in Australia, but, after a time, the old spirit flagged. He wasn't the same gay, blithe creature that Emma found awaiting her in the darkened drawing-room. Even the waxed mustaches seemed to droop a little with weariness. For Jason was growing old in body, and he knew it. "My sciatica," he said, "will not let me alone."
"For an active, nervous man like me," he had told Emma only that morning, "there ain't much left when his body begins to get old."
Even his return home had been in a way a failure. He began now to think he ought never to have come back, Emma was the only one pleased by his return. "You'd have thought," he told himself, "that she'd have forgotten me long ago and taken to thinking about other things." It was pretty fine to have a big, handsome woman like Emma give you all her devotion. Yes, she was glad enough to see him, but there was his boy, Philip, whom he hardly knew. He'd never get to know Philip: he couldn't understand a boy like that. And this Naomi business. It was too bad, and of course it was a scandal, but still that didn't make any difference in the way you enjoyed living. The truth was that Philip ought to be kind-a glad to be rid of her. It wasn't a thing he could help, and he'd behaved all right. If there was another woman, Philip had kept it all quiet. There wasn't any scandal. And now, if he wanted to marry her, he could—if she wasn't married too. No, he couldn't understand Philip. Emma had done something to him.
The return was a failure. He hadn't even had any glory out of it, except on that first night when he'd had his triumph over pie-faced Elmer; but who wanted a triumph over a thing like Elmer? No, he'd been forgotten, first in the excitement of the riot when they'd killed a couple of dirty foreigners, and then by Naomi running off and killing herself with a preacher. Em wouldn't let him say that preachers were a bad lot but he had his ideas, all the same. The Town had forgotten all about him—him, a man who lost his memory, and who had been thought dead for twenty-six years. Of course he hadn't quite lost his memory, but he might have lost it. . . .
And then he was homesick. The Town wasn't home to him any more. It was no more his real home than Philip was his real son, or Emma his real wife.
He was thinking all these things, mechanically rolling a ball back and forth to the twins, when Philip came in. At first Jason didn't notice him, and when he did look up, the drawn, white look on the face of his strange son frightened him. He tried to jest, in a wild effort to drive away that sense of depression.
"Well, here I am," he said brightly. "Back again like a bad penny." Philip didn't answer him, and he said, "I just ran in to say I'm going home day after to-morrow."
"Home?" asked Philip, with a look of bewilderment.
"Yes . . . home to Australy."
"Oh." Then the boy pulled himself together with an effort. "But I thought this was your home."
"No . . . not really. You see, I've lived out there most of my life. And this darned Town has changed so, it don't seem the same any longer. It's all full of new people . . . and foreigners. Most of 'em have never heard of me."
"What'll Ma think?"
"I don't know. I haven't told her, but she knows I had to go back some day. She'll think I'm comin' back. She'll have that to look forward to."
"You're not coming back . . . ever?"
"It ain't likely. They say an animal wants to go home when he's dying. Well, that's me. I want to go home."
"But you're not dying."
"No, but I ain't as young as I once was. I don't want there to be no mistake." He appeared to grow even more dejected. "If I'm out there, I'll know where I am. It's no place for a man like me here in this Town. Why, there ain't room to breathe any more." He took a cigar out of his yellow waistcoat pocket and offered it to Philip, who refused it instinctively, and then accepted it, moved by the pathetic effort at friendliness. The little man wanted to tell him something; he wanted to treat him as a son, to create suddenly a bond that had never existed. He held a match for the cigar and then lighted his own. "It's like this, Philip," he said. "I've been thinking it over. You don't want to stay in this Town any more?"
"No."
"It's no place for a fella like you any more than it is for one like me. We've got to have room to breathe and think. I often think that. It's a nasty place, this Town—no room for a fella to do as he wants . . . always somebody a-watchin' of 'im."
Philip scarcely heard what he was saying, but he did notice the return of the haunting, half-comic accent. It was the first time that he had ever seen his father grave, the first time a serious thought had ever pierced the gay, shiny surface. And suddenly he felt a queer affection for the little man. Jason was making so great an effort that his face had turned red as a turkey-cock's.
"It's like this, Philip. . . . Why don't you come away with me to Australia? It's a fine life, and I'm rich out there." He waited for a moment, and when Philip didn't answer, he said, "You could begin all over again—like a new person. I know you could, because I did it myself . . . I started all over." Again he waited. "There's nothing to keep you, is there? No woman?"
He always thought of women first—his father. Philip turned slowly. "Yes . . . there is."
"Does she count as much as that?"
"Yes."
"You could marry her and take her along, couldn't you? She ain't a married woman, is she?"
"No."
"She'd be likely to go with you?"
"Yes, she'd go anywhere I chose, I guess."
"She must be the right sort."
There was a pause, and Jason struck suddenly at the thing that had been hanging over both of them like a shadow. "Out there, you'd be where your Ma couldn't put her nose in."
"Oh, I'm going away. . . . I'm not going to stay here."
Jason suddenly brightened. "Then come along with me. I'd even wait till you could get away. We ought to get better acquainted, Philip, and you'd like it out there." He laid a hand suddenly on Philip's arm. "I'll tell you something, if you promise not to tell your Ma . . . at least not till I'm gone."
He looked searchingly at Philip, who asked, "What is it?"
"You mustn't tell. You've got to promise."
"No, I won't tell."
"You've got brothers and sisters out in Australia!"
Jason looked at him with an air of expectancy, but Philip only looked puzzled.
"What on earth do you mean by that, Pa?"
"You wouldn't be alone out there. You see I've got a family there too. . . . You'd have brothers and sisters there."
"But you're married to Ma."
"That's all right. I ain't a bigamist. I've just never been married to Dora—that's my other wife. She knows about Em. I told her everything. I guess she always liked me so much that not being married didn't matter."
The little man put his head on one side. At the thought of Dora his depression seemed to vanish. As for Philip, he simply stared, failing to live up to such an announcement. It neither surprised nor shocked him, for the whole thing seemed completely unreal, as if he were holding the fantastic conversation in a dream. It was the other thing that was real—the sight of the room in disarray with Mary's handkerchief laid on the table by the hand of Naomi . . . the memory of the sordid bed with the depression in the gray coverlet.
"You don't seem surprised," said his father.
"No. . . . No. . . . Nothing surprises me any more. I suppose if you wanted to have a family out there, it was all right. You can't expect a man to stop living." (He was right then: his father had had a woman out there.)
"But you see, Philip, they're your brothers and sisters . . . your father's children."
Philip made an effort. "How many of them are there?"
Jason's yellow waistcoat swelled with pride. Three boys and two girls, he said. "Nobody can say I haven't done my part in helping the world along. All strapping big ones too. The youngest . . . Emma . . . is thirteen."
"Emma!"
"Yes. I called her after your Ma. I always liked the name, and I always liked your Ma too, when she's not having tantrums."
Suddenly Philip wanted to laugh. The desire arose from a strange mixture of pain and mirth. It was ridiculous.
"The others are Jason, Henry, Hector and Bernice. It was Dora who named the others. Dora's a wonderful woman . . . like your Ma in a way, only Dora understands me."
There was a long, sudden silence, in which Philip thought, "If I'd only done as he did, everything would have been all right. He's happy and he's been free . . . always. I was weak and cowardly. I didn't do one thing or the other, and now there's no way out."
"You see what I mean," said Jason. "You'd have a home out there, and a family too. You wouldn't be going alone into a new country." He looked at his son wistfully. "You'd better come with me . . . woman or no woman."
"No, Pa . . . I can't. I've got to marry the woman, and I want to go to a new country . . . alone." His face was gray and drawn suddenly. "I've got to do it . . . it's the only thing."
"You'd better think it over, Philip."
"I've thought it over . . . I've been doing nothing else."
His father took up the tan derby. "And you won't tell your Ma, will you?"
"I won't tell her . . . ever. You needn't worry."
"You can tell her when I'm gone . . . I don't want to face her, that's all."
Jason went out, all depressed once more. Philip wasn't his boy at all. Emma had done something to him.
When he had gone, Philip sat down and began to laugh. He felt sick inside, and bruised. "Oh, my God! And I've got three brothers and two sisters in Australia! And that's where he got the accent. He got it from Dora!"