Stella Dallas (1923, Houghton Mifflin)/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
1
Laurel could always pick out her father in the waiting group behind the gate at the end of the long granolithic walk outside the train in New York, twenty or thirty seconds before he saw her. This was because her eyes were so keen and sharp, while her father was a little near-sighted; and because, too, there was a change in Laurel from year to year, while her father always looked the same.
Laurel and her father were always a little formal and constrained with each other at first. Laurel never could adjust herself quickly to the fact that this distinguished-looking gentleman, with the close-shaven cheeks, little black mustache, and keen gray eyes, was her own father, whom, if he lived at home as other girls' fathers did, she would be familiar enough with to climb over, and tug and pull at, perhaps. It took a little while for him, too, she imagined, to believe that she—freckled, long-banged, and black—was his.
She seemed perfectly calm and quiet when she put her hand in his, and he leaned and kissed her, but really her heart was beating fearfully.
Inside the taxicab on the way to the hotel, where Laurel and Miss Simpson were to stay, Laurel would sit beside Miss Simpson, and her father would occupy the seat opposite them. Most of the conversation, as they rumbled along, would be between Miss Simpson and her father—about the recent journey, the weather in Boston, the weather here, unimportant subjects, with long lapses of silence between; and upon arriving at the hotel, Laurel's father would leave them at the elevator-door, and go away quickly as if he were glad to escape.
Upstairs in the luxurious three-roomed apartment which he had engaged for Laurel, there would be all sorts of surprises—dolls and elaborate toys, when Laurel was younger; candy and flowers, and a dear little fitted work-basket this time, and a pile of brand-new books, lying on the table beside the silk-shaded reading-lamp.
Laurel's father lived in bachelor's apartments not far away from the hotel. It was easy for him to come in every morning and have breakfast alone with Laurel close beside one of the high windows in the private apartment, while Miss Simpson went downstairs to the dining-room. A waiter in black, who treated Laurel as if she were a princess, and her father as if he were a king, would roll in a table with a snowy cloth on it and shining china, with all sorts of delicious smells creeping out from beneath inverted silver bowls.
It would be usually at this first breakfast alone together that the real reunion between Laurel and her father would begin. This time, however, when her father left Laurel at the elevator-door, he had said he would return at seven-thirty, and they would go to dinner somewhere together, if Miss Simpson would pardon his stealing his little girl away the very first night. So on this visit Laurel's and her father's first real words of greeting took place inside the dusky interior of the taxicab that bore them to the restaurant which he had selected. It was the first time in a whole year that they had been alone together.
They sat in silence for a moment or two, after the door had slammed upon them. Then, "Well, here we are," said Laurel's father.
"Yes," murmured Laurel.
"How are you, Laurel?" he asked.
"All right."
"What sort of a year has it been?"
"All right."
Just the shortest, most conventional of questions—just the shortest, most non-committal of answers, but full of significance to them both; full of the promise of the dawning of the old sweet intimacy which never failed to steal over Laurel and her father, once they got rid of preliminaries, and to possess them like sunshine a cloudless day, once it breaks through the mists and fogs of early morning.
Laurel's father sat away as far as possible from her and surveyed her from top to toe. The close little toque with the red berries gave her a mature look that was unfamiliar. He sighed.
"You're growing up, Lollie," he said gently.
Whenever Laurel's father called her Lollie, it always brought the vision of her mother sharply before her eyes. Her mother and father were the only two people in the world who had ever called her the silly little baby-name of Lollie—"Lolliepops" once it had been. She shoved the vision away as soon as possible. It hurt somehow. Her mother would have so loved the lights outside the taxicab window, and the taxicab too. She and her mother seldom afforded a taxicab.
"It's my new hat that makes me look grown up," said Laurel with never a reference to the creator of it. Laurel never mentioned her mother to her father. Some fine instinct within her kept her lips as sealed as his. "Don't you like it?" she inquired, a little wistfully, for her father was still gazing at her with a sort of abstracted look which she didn't comprehend.
"What? The hat? Oh, yes. I like the hat very much," he assured her. "It's very nice, and your suit too. I like your suit, Laurel. Only you're growing up, and I don't know that I like that. I don't suppose I shall dare kiss you many years longer in the station before people," he laughed. "Young ladies don't like being kissed in public, I'm told."
Laurel laughed, too—a nervous, pleased little laugh, and moved a little nearer.
"I've finished all the reading," she confided to him proudly.
"You don't mean all of it!"
"Yes, every book you put on the list," she announced, eyes shining.
"Good work, Laurel."
"Oh, it wasn't work. I love to read."
"Do you really?"
"I didn't used to so much. It just seemed to come this year—liking it so, I mean." She turned her face towards him. "When you read a book you like a lot," she went on, "do you try to stop between sentences and look around and think it over, like eating a piece of candy just as slowly as you can, so it will last longer?"
"It used to be like that," he smiled, and he reached over and put his hand over Laurel's. "I'm glad you like to read, Laurel," he said, "for I like to, too. I've hoped you'd like to read when you grew up."
Laurel looked down at her father's hand, and then quickly out of the window, as if not to frighten it away.
"Isn't it funny how many things there are that you like that I like too?" she said softly. "I was counting them up coming down on the train."
"Are there? Tell me. What?"
"Well—there's books, and woods, and camping, and dogs, and horses, and fall better than spring, and dark meat better than light, and roast beef better than chicken, and salad better than dessert, and—and—"
"Yes, go on," her father encouraged.
"Well, picture galleries, and Madame Butterfly, and that Mrs. Morrison, and—"
"That Mrs. Morrison!" her father interrupted.
"Yes. Don't you remember last year one afternoon at tea?"
"I supposed you'd forgotten all about Mrs. Morrison."
"I haven't," said Laurel.
"You saw her for only about a half an hour."
"I know it. But you know what you said beforehand?"
"What did I say?"
"Why, for me to notice her, and listen to her nice voice, for she was somebody you'd like me to grow up to be like."
"Did I say that?"
Laurel nodded.
"And you did really like her?"
"Oh, yes! She was ever so nice to me! She gave me a little silver pencil out of her bag."
"And she has invited you to spend a few days with her during this visit of yours, at her summer home on Long Island."
Laurel was silent a moment.
"Will you be there?" she inquired.
"I'm sorry. I can't. I've got to be away. That is why she has invited you, so you won't be lonely here in New York. I must be in Chicago for a few days next week on business. I don't like missing even a day of your visit, but it's necessary."
"I wouldn't mind just staying at the hotel with Miss Simpson."
"Why, I thought you said you liked Mrs. Morrison."
"I do—only—I'm used to hotels. I'm not lonely in them. I don't believe I should like visiting. Has Mrs. Morrison any children?"
"Oh, yes. Several. You'll have a splendid time."
"I think I'd rather stay at the hotel," said Laurel.
"Well, we'll see. Don't have to decide to-night. It's only for a few days anyhow. We're going to have our two weeks together in the woods just the same."
2
Stephen Dallas always tried to arrange his affairs so as to be able to take Laurel off alone with him for two weeks somewhere. The month she spent with him was usually August or September, and he usually took her into the woods.
Stephen had an idea that the farther away from people and conventionalities he could get Laurel, the more susceptible she would be to him, and to his suggestions. However, it seemed sometimes absurd even to hope to be much of a factor in forming the child's tastes and inclinations. He had only thirty short days with her each year, and he knew that during the long lapses between her visits, the influence she lived under was not conducive to the growth of the kind of seeds he planted.
When Laurel was a little girl, seven or eight years old, often Stephen would ask her what form of amusement she would prefer for an afternoon, and almost invariably she replied, when they were in New York, "Oh, the merry-go-round, or the monkeys at the Zoo." He didn't always give her the merry-go-round, nor the monkeys either. He was forever being torn between his inclination to indulge her slightest whim or wish, and thereby win her approval, and a desire to remould those whims and wishes.
When Laurel was ten years old, Stephen began taking her to picture galleries, in an attempt to instill in her some appreciation of beauty in art. Children like colored pictures, he argued. Why not give vthem good ones? He used to take her to hear good music too. Some of the symphonies, he told her, were just fairy tales told by violins, harps, French horns, and tambourines. Before a concert he took great pains to explain to Laurel the story which the various instruments were going to tell her. She would listen to his explanation fast enough, but more likely than not would fall asleep during the symphony itself.
When she was eleven years old, Stephen arranged to have Laurel visit him during the winter season, and took her for the first time to grand opera; also he took her, that same year, to several Shakesperian plays; to a beautifully staged classic for children; to a lovely fairy-like performance of dancing; all the while trying to place before her beauty in whatever form. When they were in the woods together, following a trail, helping the guides to make camp, cutting balsam boughs, gathering firewood, sitting for long hours in a boat on some lovely lake, listening for bird-calls, watching for a deer to steal down to the water's edge to drink, it was beauty in its natural form, then, that Stephen Dallas was placing before Laurel. He himself bought the clothes that Laurel wore on these trips of theirs into the woods. He took the keenest delight in selecting the rough little flannel shirts, the khaki trousers, and stout boots, visiting sporting-shop after sporting-shop before he was satisfied.
"I never saw so devoted a father as you, Stephen Dallas," one of his women friends said to him one day, during one of Laurel's visits. He had been refusing all his invitations.
Stephen Dallas had smiled and shrugged in reply. Most men, he told himself, weren't obliged to cram a year's fatherhood into one short month. They could spread it along. And most fathers, or many anyhow, in guiding their children were not obliged to exert their strength against another pair of oars, constantly pulling in another direction.
When Laurel came to visit her father for the first time he used every device and scheme he could think of to make her want to come again. It was always a little like that. Surprising, he said to himself, that he was so anxious for her to want to come again. He would think it more normal, wrapped up as he was in his business, and dead as was all desire in connection with the mistaken marriage he had made during the early years of his career in Milhampton, if he had wished to forget and bury everything related to it. Let other people forget and bury it too. If Laurel had been a boy who would grow up to bear his name, he might understand his hopes and ambitions for the child. But a girl—a solemn-eyed, long-banged little girl! He was only forty. His life was full of demands, of interests of the keenest sort, of friends, too, the best in the world. Yet the pleasure that he felt at any expression of affection from Laurel could make his eyes grow misty. And lately—last year, and the year before—a choking wave of pride would sweep over him now and then, as he observed her, or listened to some of her quiet comments.
To hear her exclaim that she loved reading—the sort of reading he had prescribed for her—had obliged him to swallow once or twice before trusting himself to speak. And picture galleries! He had thought her utterly bored by them. She was a polite little creature. She had never said she didn't like them, but after the first half-hour or so in a gallery, she usually made inquiry as to how much longer they were going to stay.
"I didn't know you liked picture galleries, Laurel," he said to her later, seated at a little table beside a trickling fountain with goldfish and twinkling lights—blue and pink and yellow—shining in its depths, and tinkling Hawaiian music sounding from somewhere in the distance. "You never said you did."
"I didn't know it until lately," said Laurel. "It came to me all in a flash. You know how liking things does come in a flash sometimes."
"No. Tell me."
He was fearfully afraid she wouldn't. She was like the gray-tailed squirrels in the park in some ways, at times ready to be friendly and intimate, and at other times shy of him, and as timid as a chipmunk.
"Well, the first time I knew I liked the woods,"—Ah! one of her trustful moods—"wasn't when I was up there in them, but right in a city street, looking into an art-store window at a picture of a trail just like lots of trails we've tramped. It flashed over me right there on the crowded city sidewalk, 'I just love the woods!' And last winter our teacher took our class at school to an art gallery one afternoon, and when I got the first queer smell, and heard the first echo-y sounds that go with art galleries, it came over me what fun we'd had picking out our favorite pictures in art galleries here in New York, and going afterwards to get hot chocolate somewhere, and all of a sudden it flashed over me, 'Why, I just love art galleries!'"
"And 'Madame Butterfly'?"
"Yes, the same way," she told him. "I thought I'd forgotten all about it, except the fat woman who sat in front of us, and how she hadn't gotten the powder on even, on the back of her neck; but one day last summer the orchestra at the hotel where mother—where we—were staying, played a piece that I knew I'd heard before, and I peeked over the violinist's shoulder, and found out what it was. And all of a sudden I saw that lovely Japanese lady in the beautiful white satin kimono on her porch with the pink sky beyond, singing about her baby. The orchestra played it lots of times after that. I asked them to, and it's my favorite piece of music now."
Laurel's father looked away from her. Some of his seeds, then, had taken root and were growing. Even among thorns! He must plant and plant and plant, then, while it was still the planting season.
3
Later that same night, in Laurel's room at the hotel, Stephen sat down beside her by the reading-lamp, and glanced through the pile of books he had selected for her. "Idyls of the King" was one of the books.
"What do you say we save this one to read out loud in the woods?" he inquired.
Laurel, sunk in a soft deep armchair, the fitted work-basket in her lap, the box of candy open on the table near by, didn't hear him apparently.
"Are there any 'cheapest rooms' in this hotel?" she asked, gazing speculatively at the old-rose draperies at the high windows, and at the expanse of lace beyond.
"Don't you like these rooms, Laurel?"
"Oh, yes! Yes! Only—"
The crystal clock on the mahogany mantel had just struck ten-thirty. The Wednesday night "movies" at the summer hotel would be finishing about now. Laurel's mother, all dressed up in her pretty clothes, would be going upstairs to the horrid little bedroom, very soon, alone.
"Only what?" her father asked.
"Oh, nothing. I've been wondering what it would look like beside this one—that's all."
That wasn't all. Her father felt sure it wasn't all. But many of her thoughts he was unable to follow to their source. A faint suspicion disturbed him. Surely the allowance he sent to Laurel's mother was sufficient. He could vouch that as long as a sure three hundred and fifty dollars was coming to Stella every month, she would live well wherever she was. She delighted in living well.
"Why should you be thinking about cheap rooms?" he asked.
"No reason," Laurel replied shortly.
She was not going to tell him anyhow. That was clear. Useless to coax her.
Before he left her for the night, he said to her, "I really think you'd like it at Mrs. Morrison's, Laurel."
"Do you want me to go?"
"Well, I want you to know Mrs. Morrison," he replied. "I feel that when you are with me I must give you the best of everything I can, Laurel, and when Mrs. Morrison invited you to stay with her I was very happy to give you five whole days of life in her home."
"If it's just for me, then, I think I'd rather stay here, if you don't mind."
Stephen looked down at a book on the table and opened it. He was standing up all ready to go.
"I don't mind," he said, gazing at the printed page, but not seeing it, "only," he went on, "I should feel sorry, I suppose, if you didn't like some little present I'd picked out for you which I thought very nice. And so, too, I suppose I shall feel a little disappointed if you don't wish to go to Mrs. Morrison's." He closed the book. "But of course I don't really mind. You're the one to be pleased."
He did mind. He minded awfully. He always minded when his voice was low and serious, like that.
"I'll go," said Laurel.
"Oh, you don't have to, my dear."
"I'd like to go," she assured him brightly, which was true. Laurel would like to do anything to please her father.