“Oh, my God,” murmured Ursula, who had learned in these years to swear fervently.
CHAPTER XXII
Three of the larger rooms had been thrown together to make the nursery. Ursula had objected to this. The Prescotts had frequent and important visitors; they deserved the best, the lightest and most impressive rooms. When Mr. Jay Regan of New York had visited this house, William had relinquished his own room rather than disturb the children. Ah, nothing must disturb the precious children! Mr. Regan had had much difficulty in concealing his ennui when the children had been brought frequently into his presence. But William, selfishly, did not see this.
Ursula never quite recovered from the mortification she suffered during Mr. Regan’s visit. Mr. Regan was a genial and brilliant man, shrewd and witty, an entrepreneur on a grand scale, a familiar of presidents and kings. Such a man, at home anywhere in the world was certainly not a man to be enchanted by childish babble, or by having his hours of business and pleasure interrupted by petulant childish demands. He had grand-children of his own; he did not afflict hosts or guests with tales of their intelligence or escapades. He had been a fond father, but he had confined his fondness to the nursery.
On the second evening of his visit to the Prescott home, Ursula and William gave a magnificent dinner in his honor. A carefully selected guest-list had been prepared, in order that Mr. Regan might not be bored by inferior minds and mediocre conversation. This selection had caused Ursula many anxious hours, but finally she was satisfied. Though rarely interfering in the affairs of the household, she had, herself, prepared the menu, had superintended the setting of the dining-table for twenty-eight people. She knew the importance, to William, of this visit. Pridefully, too, she was determined that Mr. Regan should be convinced that insular life was not barbaric, and that the social amenities, and culture, were not confined to New York and Europe. She had met Mr. Regan before, had admired him greatly, and had known that he, in turn, had admired her.
The dinner began very auspiciously. Ursula had warned the nursemaids and Mrs. Templeton and Lucy that everything must be so conducted that no adult guest would ever suspect that children lived in the house. To her, this was so elementary that it irritated her that servants must be reminded of the fact.
The food was excellent, and beautifully served. William knew nothing of wines, so Ursula had studiously selected them. Mr. Regan gave every sign of enjoyment, and his full booming laugh was heard frequently. Ursula, drawn taut for hours, began to relax and enjoy herself. Dessert was brought in, a mousse made by Ursula under the amazed nose of her cook. In a few moments, she thought, the ladies would “retire,” and the gentlemen would have their cigars and brandy alone. The dinner had gone off splendidly; nothing could have been more perfect.
All at once, while Mr. Regan was in the very midst of telling a joke, there came a roaring screech from outside the dining-room, and little Thomas, followed by his even smaller sister, Julia, and a scuttling battery composed of nursemaids, Miss Andrews, and Mrs. Templeton, exploded into the room. Instantly, it was as if a menagerie had poured itself pell-mell upon the company. Thomas and Julia were robust and agile children; they tore about the table snatching nimbly at nuts and wafers and glasses, stuffing their mouths, eluding their guardians deftly, and emitting screams when a distraught hand tried to catch them. Round and round the table rushed the children and the servants, while glasses toppled on the damask and ladies cried out and shrank in their chairs and gentlemen looked on in cold disgust.
Ursula, in horror, clutched the edge of the table and tried to make herself heard in the uproar. Then, incredulously, she heard someone laughing. She looked at Mr. Regan. But Mr. Regan was not amused; he was busy removing plate and silver and glasses from the small hands that reached for them. No one was amused. Except William. It was from William that the laughter came, the fond and doting laughter of a man who could find something entrancing in this wild mêlée of children and servants.
He held out his arm and caught Thomas, on the third round. He caught Julia as she tumbled after her brother. He lifted both children upon his knee, and they climbed over him, not affectionately, as he imagined, but like swarming animals. Ursula saw their wide restless eyes; she saw them grasping morsels from their father’s plate; she heard their incoherent cries. She turned her head aside in complete demoralization and shame.
William looked at Mr. Regan through a tangle of arms, and lovingly bobbed his head about between two smaller and much more vehement heads. Behind him, the servants gathered breathlessly, avoiding the eye of their mistress.
William said, indulgently: “They’re furious, the rascals. They didn’t want to be shut out of things, and I don’t blame them! After all, they like excitement, too.”
Mr. Regan did not reply. He looked at his sleeve; there was a large red wine stain on his immaculate linen. Some had also splashed on the bosom of his shirt. All at once everyone sat very still, heads averted. There was no sound in the room but the meaningless jabber of the scrambling children, their insistent, infantile voices.
Then Ursula, white and trembling, said to the servants: “Take the children away, please. At once.”
William stared at her down the length of the table. He held the children to him tightly. “What do you mean?” he asked, roughly. “They have a right here. They’re only enjoying themselves. Perhaps,” he added, with weighty sarcasm, “our guests don’t have the aversion for children you have.”
He looked at his guests, inviting them to smile in agreement. But no one returned his glance.
Oh, it isn’t possible he is such a fool! thought Ursula, desperately. She tried to smile at Mr. Regan. It was a painful smile.
“Our children are very—active,” she murmured. She dropped her eyes helplessly to Mr. Regan’s sleeve and bosom. “But perhaps you know, Mr. Regan, how active children are.”
Mr. Regan said quietly: “My children, my dear Ursula, are grown up. Thank God.” Then, seeing her misery, he added kindly: “They grow up very fast. Fortunately. It doesn’t matter in the least,” he continued. “Don’t be disturbed, Ursula.”
Ursula rose, and all rose with her. “We’ll leave the gentlemen alone,” she murmured, and led the ladies out of the room. Once in the drawing-room, every woman tactfully tried to help her regain her poise. No one mentioned the children. Ursula smiled and chatted and hardly remembered what she said.
She learned, later, that William had not sent the children away. He had allowed them to remain while he and Mr. Regan and the other gentlemen had tried to discuss some very serious financial matters. They had not succeeded. The guests, finally reduced to silence, had been compelled to sit there, while William had conducted a laughing conversation with his children, and had carefully translated their screaming babble for the edification of his friends. Only when the men stood up to join the ladies did William reluctantly carry his son and daughter upstairs to the nursery. He did not return for at least half an hour.
After that, the children were permitted at the table during the stay of Mr. Regan. Ursula shuddered for months at the memory of dinners disrupted by overturned milk-glasses, shriekings, roars for attention from servants busy about the table, cries and weepings, attempts at pacification by Miss Andrews, who ought not to have been present at all, but who had been assigned a conspicuous place near William where she and the master could devote at least half their time to Thomas and Matthew and Julia.
Mr. Regan cut short his stay, on the plea of some unexpected business which demanded his presence in New York. During his visit, Ursula had contained herself, but when she was alone with William she embarked on a serious quarrel with him. She was both hysterical and distracted as she recalled to her husband her embarrassment and shame of the past week.
“I suppose it never occurred to you, William, that Mr. Regan left when he did because of Tom’s misbehavior and Julie’s constant roaring? Doubtless you thought Mr. Regan found Miss Andrews’ company fascinating! It is my opinion that Mr. Reg
an considers this a madhouse, as indeed it is! Why he continued negotiations with you is beyond me.”
William flushed darkly at this, and gave Ursula a savage look. He said: “You do not seem to understand that children are more important than their elders.”
“Mr. Regan does not think so!” cried Ursula. “Neither does anyone else with any sense at all.”
It had ended in nothing, as it always ended in nothing except hostility and bitterness between husband and wife. Ursula tried to entertain as little as possible. When she and William were alone she kept the conversation on a superficial level, where it was safe.
It was a terrible thing for her to see that William’s children, young as they were, were beginning to have for him a certain ugly contempt, and that they displayed towards their mother a sullen resentment because of her attempts to discipline them when their father was absent.
These children, who ought to have been the delight and happiness of a well-managed and disciplined household, had made of this magnificent if garish house a place of quarrelings and unhappiness and tension. They had appeared between their parents like a deadly enemy, creating hostility where there should have been devotion, alienation where there ought to have been companionship and communion.
Ursula, as a sensible woman, had attempted to salvage what she could from the fiasco of her marriage. She proposed small journeys for herself and her husband. Very rarely, he agreed to them. But when they were alone together in some luxurious hotel in Washington, Chicago, New York or Pittsburgh, she was aware of his restlessness. They had nothing to say to each other. There were moments, however, when he looked at her and his small hard eyes softened involuntarily. These moments were few. But she cherished them. She determinedly remembered them when he informed her, usually on the second or third day, that he was lonely for the children and wished to return home. She kept the memory of them before her during the long weeks of estrangement, during William’s absences.
Sometimes, when she believed happily that the children were in bed and asleep, she attempted to talk to William, using a soft and loving voice, trying to arouse his interest in matters which were important to her. It was not often that he gave her his complete attention but, when he did, these moments were almost invariably interrupted by the sudden boisterous appearance of Thomas in his nightshirt, or of the wailing angry Julia in the arms of her current and harassed nurse. Then they were finished, these quiet hours before the fireplace or in the garden together. William would forget his wife; he would take the child in his arms and go off, or settle the weeper upon his knee and speak to him in a voice which he never used towards Ursula, so rich and deep was it, so moved and tender.
A less intelligent woman would have come to resent or hate the children who had deprived her of her husband, who had ruined her marriage and created chaos about her. But Ursula was too intelligent for such unrestrained, if natural emotions. If William was destroying the happiness of his wife, he was destroying his children also.
CHAPTER XXIII
On Sunday afternoons, when William performed his fatherly rites in the nursery, Ursula had need of all the patience and calmness she could command. When she was well, it was not too hard. When she was pregnant and weary, as she was today, it was almost more than she could bear. She longed for personal tenderness; she longed to lie down and have William hold her hand and speak gently to her. These were longings not to be satisfied. She must play the devoted mother, if she was to get the slightest attention from him, the merest smile. Sighing, and accompanied by Oliver, she entered the nursery.
Yes, everything was as absurd and boring as usual on Sunday afternoons. The large and beautiful play-room was dusky, full of firelight. Near the hearth sat William; Julia upon his knee; Thomas at his feet, surlily tearing apart some toy. Thomas had a penchant for wanton destruction. Matthew sat by the darkening window; it was impossible to tell if he were listening to William, who was reading some fairy-tale by the flickering light of the fire. A nursemaid was laying a Sunday supper for the children, on a distant table, for Ursula, upon one explosive occasion a year ago, had insisted that she dine alone with her husband on Sunday evenings. This had been her only victory; she had clung to it, for all William’s ugly silences on these occasions, his somber and repellent glances at his wife. Nearby, behind, and to the side of William, sat Miss Andrews and Mrs. Templeton, meek and adoring neophytes in this temple of child-worship.
Ursula smiled sweetly and impersonally at everyone, sweeping the room with a deceptively tranquil eye. No joyful cries from her children greeted her; William, in his abnormal possessiveness, his loud defenses of his children in his wife’s presence, had succeeded excellently in alienating the two boys and the little girl from their mother. Thomas regarded her in rude silence; Matthew turned his small and apathetic face towards her for an instant, then resumed his blank staring at, rather than through, the window. Julia wriggled impatiently on her father’s knee, and peremptorily demanded a sweet from the table. The nursemaid, who had stayed in this household the incredible period of six months, immediately brought a small cake, which Julia devoured with a kind of angry sullenness. William gave Ursula an abstracted glance, smoothed the little girl’s long auburn hair with a tender hand.
In a voice falsely cheerful, Ursula exclaimed: “Dear me, how dark it is in here! Nancy, please light a lamp or two. How are you, William? Dear Tommy, look what you are doing to your lovely jack-in-a-box, and Papa only just bought it for you. Matthew, are you quite well? Why are you sitting alone at the window?” She did not wait for a reply, but increased the cheer in her voice: “Oliver and I have just returned from visiting Alice. A delightful day for driving.”
“You are late,” said William. But his tone was not accusing; it even had a slight satisfaction in it. “I decided to have a cold supper about an hour ago.” He looked at Ursula without expression; his face was set and impervious.
So, we are not to dine together tonight, thought Ursula. Her smile remained fixed. “I am so sorry. I did not realize it was late. I can have a tray in my room.”
But William was staring at Oliver. It invariably gave Ursula the strangest feeling when she saw her husband looking at the boy. His expression was not always harsh or rejecting; sometimes, as now, it was thoughtful or perplexed. Did he still have some affection for the child he had adopted and had adored so ridiculously only a few short years ago? Ursula had once thought that Oliver disturbed his father in a way impossible for any onlooker to understand.
Oliver went to William without hurry or hesitation or fear. He kissed William’s hard cheek. “Good evening, Papa,” he said. He smiled at William, and touched his father’s shoulder lightly with his hand.
“Good evening,” replied William, shortly. He continued to stare at the boy. “I gave you a fine gold watch for your birthday, Oliver. Surely you could have taken note of the time. You and your mother are nearly an hour late. You ought to have reminded her.”
Ursula sat down. She said: “It was my fault, William. We went into the garden with Alice, and talked too long. Do not blame Oliver.”
She gave Oliver a kindly look of apology. But Oliver only stood by William’s side, as if protecting him. At this moment, Julia kicked furiously at Oliver’s knee. “Go ’way!” she screamed. Ursula’s attention was suddenly caught and transfixed. She had not been mistaken. Julia, though only a baby, had felt Oliver’s protectiveness toward her father. Thomas knew of it; he scowled up from his father’s feet and made an ugly face at Oliver. Matthew, still at the window, turned and fixed his light-blue eyes intently upon his adopted brother.
“Hush, dear,” said William tenderly, to his little daughter, and he stroked her head again with his big lean hand. “You must not talk that way to your brother.” Julia screamed again, writhed on her father’s knee; she turned her small pretty head and bit his hand.
Ursula sprang to her feet, forgetting all the self-control of years. “Julie! You dreadful child! Nancy, take Julie away immediately.”
As quickly as her heavy body would permit, she ran to William and caught at his hand. The teeth-marks were deep and reddened on it, and one or two were beginning to bleed. Apparently William was astounded; he, too, looked at the marks. Julia screamed louder, slipped from her father’s knee, and ran, howling, to Mrs. Templeton. Mrs. Templeton did not know what to do. She stood helplessly, while Julia tugged ferociously at her skirts.
William snatched his hand from Ursula. His face, so deeply lined though he was not yet forty, flushed an unpleasant crimson. He regarded Ursula inimically. “Why do you make such a fuss? Please sit down. Julie is only a baby. She does not understand.”
Ursula, seeing only the torn and bleeding skin on that beloved hand, was not to be quelled. She turned about. She reached Julia in a single moment, and slapped the child strongly upon the cheek. “You nasty little beast!” she cried. Her anger was a gust of strong and relentless wind. “Nancy,” she said in a loud, breathless voice, “take Julie at once and put her to bed!”
Everyone stared at Ursula’s aroused face, and shrank. Thomas no longer smiled; he glared at his mother. Matthew blinked his eyes. Oliver did not move. Nancy, with hesitation, and carefully avoiding looking at William, picked up Julia, who screamed and struggled, and held out her arms to her father, her baby features distorted with amazement and fury. Her sturdy feet flung themselves out spasmodically and vindictively at Ursula. Ursula caught one of them, and administered another sound slap on the child’s thigh. Julia suddenly subsided, was silent a moment, then burst into sobs.
“Take her away, Nancy!” Ursula’s voice was strong and firm. She saw William rising slowly and implacably. Nancy was already scuttling from the room. The door closed behind her and the squalling child.