“Well,” said Mr. Petersen to himself, “I’m not the first nor the last!”
He was standing on the back porch, looking into the kitchen formerly Mrs. Hansen’s immaculate kingdom. How changed, how sadly altered now! As if a huge maddened bumblebee had been flying about in it, knocking down everything, making all sorts of stupid mischief. Dirty pots and pans on the stove, the sink, even, unaccountably, on the chairs. And extraordinary things, which interested him, on the floor, egg-shells, toys, a pair of gloves.
Without the least trouble he could remember just how it had been nine or ten months ago, when Mrs. Hansen had ruled, when he had been a bachelor. Sighed, but not with bitterness. Order-loving and systematic as he was, he was not exasperated by the turmoil in his home, or by the dreadful meals. He had toward Minnie an absolutely boundless tenderness. For one thing, he could see that she always tried; her failure came not from laziness but from—he hesitated even to think it—from lack of intelligence, from a sort of obstinate stupidity.
Servants were hard to procure and Minnie never got on well with them. There were always scenes, in which Minnie was the perfect Defoe and the servant very impudent. She seemed to have an absolute talent for provoking impudence from the most unexpected sources. Furthermore, she would not pay good wages. She resented the very idea of a servant profiting by her work. It was one of her queer little parsimonies. So she was compelled to do most of the work of the house alone. When she became quite submerged in the torrent of disorder, she called upon Mrs. Hansen, but grudgingly and ungraciously.
It was after six, and she hadn’t begun even to consider dinner. He went upstairs and found her sweeping the big bedroom with frantic haste.
“Oh, Chris,” she said, with a worried frown, “I know I’m awfully late. But I had a terrible headache, and I had to lie down almost all afternoon.”
He put his arm about her shoulders.
“Oh, leave this!” he said. “You poor little soul! If you’re well enough to get dressed, we’ll go and have dinner at the Eagle House.”
“But, Chris, the house! The kitchen!”
“Nonsense! I’ll get Mrs. Hansen”
“No, not that odious woman!”
“Someone else then. Come on, little Minnie! Put on your nice new dress! I’ll find Sandra.”
Finding Sandra was a recognised preliminary. Her mother never knew where she was. She roamed about the neighbourhood, dirty and beautiful, playing with whatever children she encountered, or, oftener, went quite alone on her expeditions. She was never hungry, and hadn’t the least regard for meal times. Sometimes it sufficed to call her, sometimes Petersen went making enquiries.
He found her this time in the garden next door, talking with the old lady who lived there. As soon as she saw his kindly face she rushed up to him and sprang into his arms with the warm and silent affection she had developed for him, and which so enraptured him. He smiled apologetically over her head at the old lady, and carried her off. She was five now, and tall for her age, thinner than ever, and lovelier. She had lost the softness of babyhood, her little face was pointed, her features clearer. Mr. Petersen looked upon her with an admiration that was almost awe. His feeling for this child was more than he could express, more than he could comprehend; something beyond any paternal affection. Minnie loved her, with a violent and undiscriminating passion, but he was privately convinced that Minnie didn’t quite understand her, or quite appreciate her rareness. She would, he fancied, have loved any child she had borne with the same fervour.
“Well, Sandra!” he said, “are you hungry?”
“No, Uncle Chris.”
So she always answered, and it always worried him. He had been disturbed to learn from Minnie that the child never drank milk, didn’t like it. He found a very particular sort of cow out in the country and arranged with its owner to deliver daily a quart of its milk, and, with bribes and cajolery, got her to drink it.
“How much milk to-day?” he asked, as he did every evening.
“None. Because Michael tipped over the bottle just when Mother opened it, and he drank it all up, from the floor, like this.”
She illustrated with a small tongue.
“Now then, that will never do! We shall have Michael growing bigger than you!”
That amused her, and together they constructed imaginary scenes with an enormous Michael.
“We’re going out to dinner to-night,” he said. “Uncle Chris will make you pretty, eh?”
So he carefully washed the little face, and combed her hair, talking to her all the while.
“What did the little girl do to-day?” he asked.
“I writed a letter to my daddy. I writes to my daddy every day.”
He felt a great pity for her, and a generous pity for the man who had had to leave her forever. She often spoke about her father, and in honour bound, Mr. Petersen encouraged it, although it wasn’t altogether pleasant for him. He didn’t like to be reminded of the dead Englishman whom he had supplanted.
“That’s right,” he said. “Remember your daddy.”
The little girl was sitting on his knee while he buttoned her frock; she rubbed her silky head against his face and rested for a moment against him. He could hear Minnie in the next room, opening bureau drawers in a vain search for some of her perpetually lost belongings.
“Mother wroted too, to daddy,” Sandra went on, “and I did post it in the high box.”
He wondered casually whom Minnie had been writing to, then in an instant forgot all about it, for he heard her calling him in a queer, desperate voice:
“Chris! Chris!”
He hurried in to her. She had apparently begun to dress and then stopped; she was standing, leaning against the bureau, in a petticoat and a cheap little flannel dressing sack, her hair down.
“Chris!” she cried again.
“What’s the matter? Are you ill? Shall I send for the doctor? Speak! What’s the matter?”
“I know I’m going to die!” she whispered.
He was appalled.
“Die! Minnie, my dear, what is it!”
She collapsed in his arms; not in a faint, simply gave way, in a sort of dreadful limpness. He carried her to the bed and covered her up with a blanket, and stood looking down at her in helpless alarm.
“Shall I telephone the doctor?” he asked.
She nodded feebly, and he ran downstairs to do so. Then sat down by the bedside to wait. He would very much have liked to tidy the room a bit before the doctor came, but Minnie had clutched his hand tightly, lying with closed eyes and rigid face. He felt himself disgustingly petty to be troubled by details, by corsets on the bureau, an underskirt dangling on the gas bracket, a window curtain secured only by a pin.... Nothing better should be expected from a woman in her condition. And what did it matter? He tried to concentrate his attention on Minnie, but unhappily his eye fell upon a sort of waste tract under the bed, where in a tangle lay fluffy bits of hair, mouse-like rolls of dust, torn letters, stockings, toys of Sandra’s.
The doctor came and Petersen went downstairs to Sandra.
“Mother’s not well to-night,” he told her. “We’ll see if Uncle Chris can’t fix up some supper for his little girl.”
Resolutely denying the emotions that were assailing him, disgust, impatience and despair, he went into the awful kitchen.
“It can’t go on this way,” he said, half-aloud. “Ill or not, she could surely.... We’d better give up housekeeping if she can’t find a servant. We’d better board.”
And the emotions suddenly mastered him.
“This is filthy!” he cried. “This is horrible! You’d lose your soul in a mess like this! There isn’t, there can’t be any excuse for such a state of things!”
He came out of the awful kitchen, banging the door, and, in a whisper, telephoned for Mrs. Hansen.
Presently the doctor came down.
“She’s in a very nervous state,” he said, “but there’s nothing physically wrong, as far as I can see. Morbid. Thinks she can’t live through it. That she’s going to die. Not unusual in her condition. If I were you, I’d see she didn’t over-exert herself. Persuade her to rest more. Get a good servant, Mr. Petersen; you can afford it. Try to interest the little lady in sewing, books, that sort of thing.”
Mr. Petersen went upstairs again, to find Minnie in tears. He told her what the doctor had said.
“But I don’t want a servant!” she cried. “No, Chris! I’d far rather have the extra money.”
“I’ll give you the extra money beside,” he assured her, in surprise. “You know, my dear, you only need mention”
It wasn’t the first time he had reflected on the subject of Minnie and income. He allowed her considerably more for housekeeping than Mrs. Hansen had had, and yet she couldn’t manage. They had cheaper food, and not too much of it. She bought no clothes for herself, and only what was essential for Sandra. The entire tone of his life was lowered; broken articles were always replaced by something cheaper. It had more than once occurred to him that Minnie must be saving, laying up a little hoard on her own account, and it rather hurt him. She knew he had left her everything in his will, and he felt that she might certainly trust him while he was living. He was very generous with her, and never asked a question, once he had given her any money; but he hated waste and extravagance, and he had no intention of giving her too free a rein. His former idea of a wife who should be a comrade, to share equally in all he had, to be consulted and apprised of everything, had gone. Minnie was not a comrade, whatever else she was. Business could never be discussed with her. He couldn’t even say, “We’ll spend so much of our profits,” or tell her what proportion he wished to save or to reinvest. He simply had to tell her, “I can afford so much and so much,” and she would take it without comment. Her share of his money, as a woman, was all that she could get hold of; she didn’t consider it a right or a privilege, but an opportunity.
He didn’t resent that attitude; he was strong enough and large-minded enough to admit the exorbitant claims of the weak. The only thing he did resent a little was her secretiveness. Her ruling instinct was to hide everything, to conceal her true thoughts, to distort her actions. She didn’t like even to tell him what she had eaten for lunch. Her age remained forever dubious. She had curious reticences about different phases of her childhood. Her little prevarications he didn’t so much mind; was rather amused by them. If she wanted to hurry him she ingenuously told him the time a half hour in advance of the truth. She gave him milk with his coffee and declared that it was cream. She told him things cost twice as much as they did, so that she could pocket the difference. And he, with a fatuousness by no means rare in this world, felt that there was no harm in these naïve little deceptions, was sure that in anything important she was quite to be trusted. If only she had talked more, confided in him more fully, he would have been entirely satisfied. Suspiciousness was utterly foreign to his kindly heart.
Although doubts were beginning to trouble him.... This “attack” for instance. He could not stifle a feeling that she had some object to gain by it. He wanted, of course, to be sympathetic, but it was not easy. After Mrs. Hansen had come, calm, polite but outraged, and had bathed and fed Sandra and got her to sleep, he went upstairs to sit with Minnie and found her lying flat on her back, her black eyes wide and troubled.
She turned to him sombrely.
“Chris,” she said, “suppose I were to die?”
“I won’t suppose it,” he answered. “You mustn’t allow yourself to be morbid.”
“I’m not. Only there’s always a risk. And I can’t help thinking of Sandra. She hasn’t anyone but me”
“Don’t you trust me, Minnie? Don’t you know how fond I am of the child?”
“I know,” she said, with a frown. “But I’ve seen so much of that sort of love.... You might die yourself.”
“I’ve provided for that, as you know.”
“Or,—I might as well be frank, Chris. When this other child comes, you’ll feel very differently toward Sandra. You’ll lose interest in her.”
He was seriously annoyed.
“You ought to know me better”
“I’m not blaming you. But a child of your own—it’s altogether another thing. Oh, you’ll see!”
Slow tears were running down her face.
“How can I help worrying? My poor little girl!”
“What would you like me to do?” he asked kindly. “I tell you I’ve provided for her in any event.”
“I suppose there’s nothing to be done,” she answered. She turned her face to the wall and lay perfectly still. He waited until he believed her to be asleep and then went softly out. But he was amazed and horrified when, from the darkness of the hall, he saw her sit up in bed and fling her hands above her head, and whisper, with a ferocious distinctness he could not misunderstand:
“Oh, I hate your baby! I hate it! I hate it! I hope and pray it will die before it comes to rob my little girl! I hate your baby!”
He crept downstairs and into his study.
“It’s her condition,” he told himself. “She’s not normal, hardly sane.... She didn’t realise....”
But his joy and pride in the child they were expecting had quite gone. Her distorted passion had tainted his healthy common-sense. A hated, unwanted child! In spite of himself, he began to see it as a monster, began to dread it....