In a Little Town Part 7

"Don't be a brute, Pen!" said _Mere_.

At last Julie found the clipping she sought and, shaking the powder from it, handed it to her mother.

"It's on the strength of this speech that I was elected delegate to the international convention at San Francisco," she said.

"You were!" _Mere_ gasped, and Beatrice and Consuelo exclaimed, "Ripsnorting!"

"Are you going?" said _Mere_ when she recovered from her awe.

"Well, it's a pretty expensive trip. That's why I came home--to see if--Well, we can take that up later. Tell me how you like the speech."

_Mere_ mumbled the report aloud to the delighted audience. Pop heard little of it. He was having a chill. It was very like plain ague, but he credited it to the terror of Julie's mission home. All she wanted him to do was to send her on a little jaunt to San Francisco! The tyrant, as usual, was expected to finance the rebellion.

When _Mere_ had finished reading everybody applauded Julie except Pop.

_Mere_ overheard his silence and rounded on him across the aristocratic reading-gla.s.s she wielded.

"Did you hear that?"

Pop was so startled that he answered, "Uh-huh!"

"Didn't you think it was splendid?" _Mere_ demanded.

"Uh-huh!" said Pop.

"What didn't you like about it?"

"I liked it all first-rate. Julie is a smart girl, I tell you."

_Mere_ scented his evasion, and she would never tolerate evasions. She repeated:

"What didn't you like about it?"

"I liked all I could understand."

"Understand!" snapped _Mere_, who rarely wasted her culture on Pop.

"What didn't you understand? Could anything be clearer than this?

Listen!" She read in an oratorical voice:

"'Woman has been for ages man's mere beast of burden, his household drudge. Being a wife has meant being a slave--the only servant without wages or holiday. But the woman of to-day at last demands that the shackles be stricken off; she demands freedom to live her life her own way--to express her selfhood without the hampering restrictions imposed on her by the barbaric customs inherited from the time of the cave-man.'"

_Mere_ folded up the clipping and glared defiance at the cave-man slumped in the uneasy chair.

"What's clearer than that?" she reiterated.

Pop was at bay. He was like a desperate rabbit. He answered:

"It's clear enough, I guess; but it's more than I can take in. Seems to me the women folks are hollering at the men folks to give 'em what the men folks have never been able to get for themselves."

It was peevish. Coming from Pop, it amounted to an outburst, a riot, a mutiny. Such a tendency was dangerous. He must be sharply repressed at once--as a new servant must be taught her place. _Mere_ administered the necessary rebuke, aided and abetted by the daughters. The sons did not rally to their father's defense. He was soon reduced to submission, but his apology was further irritation:

"I'm kind of rattled like. I ain't feeling as chipper as usual."

"Chipper" was bad enough, but "ain't" was unendurable! They rebuked him for that and he put in another irrelevant plea: "I had a kind of sick spell at the store. I had to lay down."

"Lie down!" Beatrice corrected.

"Lie down," he accepted. "But as soon as I laid down--"

"Lay down!"

"Lay down--I had chills and shootin' pains; and I--"

"It's the weather," _Mere_ interrupted, impatiently. "I've had a headache all day--such a headache as never was known! It seemed as if hammers were beating upon my very brain. It was--"

"I'm not feeling at all well myself," said Consuelo.

There was almost a tournament of rivalry in describing sufferings.

Pop felt as if he had wakened a sleeping hospital. He sank back ashamed of his own outburst. He rarely spoke of the few ailments he could afford. When he did it was like one of his new clerks pulling a bolt of goods from the shelf and bringing down a silken avalanche.

The clinic was interrupted by the crisp voice of Nora: "Dinner is served!"

Everybody rose and moved to the door with quiet determination. Pop alone failed to rise. _Mere_ glowered at him. He pleaded: "I don't feel very good. I guess I'd better leave my stummick rest."

The children protested politely, but he refused to be moved and _Mere_ decided to humor him.

"Let him alone, children. It won't hurt him to skip a meal."

They said: "Too bad, Pop!"--"You'll be all right soon," and went out and forgot him.

Pop heard them chattering briskly. It was polite talk. If slang were used it was the very newest. He gleaned that Pen and Gerald were opposing Julie's mission to San Francisco on the ground of the expense.

He smiled bitterly to hear that word from them. He heard Julie's retort:

"I suppose you boys want the money yourselves! Well, I've got first havers at Pop. I saw him first!"

At about this point the conversation lost its coherence in Pop's ears.

It was mingled with a curious buzzing and a dizziness that made him grip his chair lest it pitch him to the floor. Chills, in which his bones were a mere rattlebox, alternated with little rushes of prairie fire across his skin. Throes of pain wrung him.

Also, he was a little afraid--he was afraid he might not be able to get to the store in the morning. And important people were coming! He had to make the first payment on the invoice of that bankrupt stock. A semiannual premium was overdue on his life insurance. The month of grace had nearly expired, and if he failed to pay the policy would lapse--now of all times! He had kept it up all these years; it must not lapse now, for he was going to be right sick. He wanted somebody to nurse him: his mother--or that long-lost girl he had married in the far past.

His shoes irked him; his vest--what they wanted called his waistcoat--was as tight as a corset. He felt that he would be safer in bed. He'd better go up to his own room and stretch out. He rose with extraordinary difficulty and negotiated a swimming floor on swaying legs.

The laughter from the dining-room irritated him. He would be better off up-stairs, where he could not hear it. The noise in his ears was all he could stand. He attained the foot of the stairs and the flight of steps seemed as long and as misty as Jacob's Ladder. And he was no angel!

The Grouts lingered at dinner and over their black coffee and tobacco until it was time to dress for the reception at Mrs. Alvin Mitnick's, at which Waupoos society would pa.s.s itself in review. The later you got there the smarter you were, and most people put off dressing until the last possible minute in order to keep themselves from falling asleep before it was time to start.

The Grouts, however, were eager to go early and get it over with. They loved to trample on Waupoos traditions. As they drifted into the hall they found it dark. They shook their heads in dismal recognition of a familiar phenomenon, and Ethelwolf groaned:

"Pop has gone up-stairs. You can always trace Pop. Wherever he has pa.s.sed by the lights are out."