Defenders of Democracy Part 48

"Poor old Joe is almost asleep," said Nellie, sweetly.

Joe did not look it, but Willoughby got out solicitously, and he sat upon a damp bench opposite Cameron's glowing windows, and he laughed and laughed till a policeman sternly ordered him to move on.

"Isn't Willoughby a dear!" Nellie commented as she moved about, putting things in their places for the night. Cameron yawned obviously. Nellie hummed a s.n.a.t.c.h of a tune.

All that long night Cameron lay stretched upon the edge of their bed, staring into the lumpy darkness. Nellie slept like a baby.

But once, soon after the lights were turned off, Cameron's blood froze by inches from his head to his feet. It seemed to him that Nellie was laughing, was fairly biting her pillow to keep from laughing aloud! Gravely, of the darkness, he asked how all this had come about. He asked it of the familiar, shadowy heap of Nellie's clothes upon the chair by the window, asked if he had deserved it.

Toward dawn he slept.

III

Cameron, after the way of the new man, kept some evening clothes down town. It saved traveling. The next afternoon, about four o'clock, there came, somewhere between the pit of his stomach and his brain, an aching weight. Conscience! At six-thirty he hung his dinner-jacket back in the closet and sent the directors word that he had a headache. Then, as blind as a moth, he started for home, for that lamp about which Nellie "Loved to buzz."

He let himself into the apartment, chuckling to think of Nellie's surprise, at just the hour at which they were used to dining. The place was shadowy, the table in its between-meals garb. The aching weight came back. He tapped on the nursery door.

Miss Merritt, the nurse, was dining by the nursery window, Billy's high chair drawn near by. Billy, drowsy and rosy, was waving a soup-spoon about his head, dabbing at the lights upon the silver with fat fingers that were better at clinging than at letting go.

"Good evening, Miss Merritt," said Cameron. "h.e.l.lo, Bill! Where's your mother?" His tone struck false, for through his mind was booming the horrible question, "Can Nellie have gone out with that a.s.s Crane to dine?"

Miss Merritt's mousy face became all eyes.

"Why, sir, Mrs. Cameron has gone out to dinner, and after to a concert. I guess you forgot, sir."

"Oh, yes," said Cameron, easily. "This is the night of the concert.

I had absolutely forgotten. I'd have got a bite down town if I'd thought. Is the cook in?"

"Sure, sir. I'll call her."

She left Cameron alone with Billy, who, cannibal-wise, was chewing his father's hand and crowing over the appetizing b.u.mps and veins.

"If you'd jest 'ave 'phoned, sir," panted the cook, who was a large, purple-faced person.

Cameron sighed.

"Just anything, Katy. I have a headache. Some eggs and toast--poached eggs, I think."

In another moment the maid pa.s.sed the nursery door, with white things over her arm, on her way to set the table.

Cameron, dazed as never in his life before, lifted Billy to his shoulder and trotted up and down the room. "Nice little boy!" he laughed, Billy's damp fists. .h.i.tting at him in ecstasy. "I'll just take him to the sitting-room while you finish your dinner." He did his best to pretend that the situation was not unusual, to act as if, in his own home, a man could be nothing but at home. All these confounded hirelings, acting as if they owned the place, had the cheek to be amazed over his dropping in!

Miss Merritt beamed.

"I always say, sir, that boys should know their fathers."

"Boys should know their fathers?" This was almost the last straw.

"Here!" said Miss Merritt, holding out a pink-edged blanket. "Jest put in on your lap, sir." There was about her that utter peculiar lack of decorum that is common to nurses and mothers and Cameron, blus.h.i.+ng furiously, grabbed the blanket and fled.

"Boys should know their father, hey?" Cameron was enraged.

"We'll see about that pretty quick!" Billy crowed with joy as the blanket flapped about them, and, above the chasm of his doubts and his conscience Cameron heard himself laugh, too. He got into his arm-chair. Billy, so warm and solid and gay, so evidently liking him, gave him, parent that he was, the thrill of adventure as his hands held him and knew him for his own. The blanket spread upon his knees, the door closed, Cameron expanded with the desire to know his son, even as it was desirable that his son should know him. He turned him over and around, he studied the vagaries of scallops and pearl b.u.t.tons; profoundly he pitied his small image for all of his discomforts, and advised him to grow out of safety-pins as fast as possible. He fell into a philosophical mood, spouting away at Bill, and Bill responded with fists and delicious gurgles and an imitative sense of investigation. Cameron reflected, with illumination, upon the amusing sounds a baby makes when the world is well. They were really having an awfully good time.

Billy was fuzzy and blond, one of those moist, very blue-eyed babies that women appreciate. Cameron all at once saw why. Warmth expanded his aching heart, and his arms circled his own mite of boy. Billy yawned, agreed instantly with Cameron that a yawn from a baby was funny, and with a chuckle pitched against Cameron, b.u.mped his nose on a waistcoat b.u.t.ton, considered the b.u.t.ton solemnly, with his small mouth stuck out ridiculously, and then snuggled into the hollow of his father's arms, and, closing his big eyes with a confidence that made thrills creep over him, the man, and brought something stinging to his eyes, Bill went to sleep.

After an unmeasured lapse of time, Miss Merritt came for the baby.

"Oh, the lambkin! Ain't he sweet, sir?"

Cameron ached in every joint, but he did not know it.

"Take care how you handle him!" he whispered. "It's awful to be awakened out of one's first sleep!"

"I know better than to wake a sleepin' baby, believe me," said Miss Merritt with a touch of spice.

The door closed. Cameron sat stretching his stiff arms and legs and staring before him, and upon his usually tired and lined face was the beam of full joy.

Then came dinner, a lonely, silent mockery of a meal. And back the question came, booming over the soft tinkling of gla.s.s and silver.

He realized, with his salad, that four nights out of seven, Nellie dined like this, alone. His lower lip protruded, and lines of conscience fell in a curtain on his face.

"Mrs. Cameron hates eatin' 'lone, too," said the maid. "She generally eats early, so 's t' have Billy in his high chair 'longside. If he sleeps, she reads a book, sir."

He was alone in the sitting-room with his coffee, and the place had sunk into fathomless silence. It was only half after eight! He stuck his head out of the window. Soft flakes touched and soothed his feverish head. "d.a.m.n money!" he whispered suddenly, then stood back in the room, startled, staring his blasphemy in the face.

He'd go out in the snow, and get rid of himself. This was awful!

Bundled in a greatcoat, collar high, trousers rolled up, he ducked out of the great marble and iron vestibule into the night. There was no wind, and the snow was falling softly, steadily. The drive was deserted, and he made his way across to the walk along the wall.

By the light of the lamp, blurred by the flakes till it looked like a tall-stemmed thistle-ball, he looked at his watch. No matter where Nellie had dined, she was a the concert by now, and a great sigh of relief fluttered the flakes about his mouth.

He turned north, glad of the rise in the ground to walk against.

"By jinks!" he smiled grudgingly, "it's not so bad out here. We city idiots, we--NEW MEN, with all our motors and subways, we are forgetting how to prowl."

The world fell of to shadow a little beyond the sh.o.r.e-line, a mere s.p.a.ce of air and flakes. Ice swirled by its way to the sea, for the tide was going out. He peered; he began to hear all sorts of fine snow-m.u.f.fled sounds; and suddenly, away out on the river, something was going on--boats whistling and signaling, chatting in their scientific persiflage, out in the dark and cold of the night. "Lonesome, too!" Cameron laughed, and, boyishly, he tossed a snow-ball into the s.p.a.ce, as if he'd have something to say out there, too! "I'm soft!" he groaned, clutching his arm. And suddenly he smiled to think how one of these days he and Bill would come out here and play together. He looked about, and a sudden pride filled him. He was actually the only creature enjoying this splendid snow! He had pa.s.sed one old gentleman in a fur-lined coat, with a cap upon his white hair, walking slowly, a white bulldog playing after him in the scarcely trodden snow.

Cameron turned home, a new and inexplicable glow upon him, cares dropped away. He marched; he laughed aloud once with a sudden thought of Bill. "Little corker!" He let himself in, and went straight to the bedroom to change his shoes. "I must get some water-tight things to prowl in," he thought, and he whistled a line of "Tipperary." Blurred in a pleasant fatigue he sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his wet socks, when the telephone jingled, and he hurried out to answer.

"Yep, this is Cameron. Oh, h.e.l.lo, old girl! Thought I'd just come up for a quiet home dinner, you know." A grin like the setting sun for warmth spread over his face as he listened, as he felt the tables turning under his wet feet.

"Nope. Just bored down-town. Felt like bein' cozy and--buzzin'

round the lamp in something comfy. Fine! Had a regular banquet!

Bill's all right, little devil! I tucked him in so he shouldn't be lonesome.

"Me? I've been out walkin'. Been throwin' snow-b.a.l.l.s at the street-lamps. My feet are soakin', but I don't care, I don't care.

Heard a concert myself, thanks. Whistles and things tootin' out in the snow on the river to beat the band! Don't think of it! I'm fine. Enjoy yourself. What's life for? Good night, old girl.

Don't lose your key!"

Cameron got as far as the cedar chest in the hall, but there, in his wet socks, he sat down and he laughed until he ached all over.

Suddenly he stiffened, and his heels banged against the chest.

Miss Merritt, mouth and eyes wide open, stood absorbing him, as crimson as was Cameron himself.