He went downstairs to find Mother, his lower lip trembling a little with his hope and fear, as Mother had not seen it since Stephen was a little tiny baby. Nor did she see it this time.
He went to the kitchen door and looked in, and instantly knew through a thousand familiar channels that it would do no good to tell Mother, then—or ever. The kitchen was full, full to suffocation with waves of revolt, and exasperation, and haste, and furious determination, which clashed together in the air above that quivering, energetic figure kneeling on the floor. They beat savagely on the anxious face of the little boy. He recognized them from the many times he had felt them and drew back from them, an instant reflection of revolt and determination lurid on his own face. How could he have thought, even for a moment, of telling Mother!
He turned away clutching Teddy and looked about him wildly. All around him was the inexorable prison of his warm, clean, well-ordered home. No escape. No appeal. No way to protect what was dear to him! There fell upon him that most sickening and poisonous of human emotions, the sensation of utter helplessness before physical violence. Mother would take Teddy away and do whatever she pleased with him because she was stronger than Stephen. The brute forces of jungle life yelled loud in Stephen’s ears and mocked at his helplessness.
But Stephen was no Henry or Helen to droop, to shrink and quail. He fled to his own refuge, the only one which left him a shred of human dignity: fierce, hopeless, endless resistance: the determination of every brave despairing heart confronted with hopeless odds, at least to sell his safety dear; to fight as long as his strength held out: never, never to surrender of his own accord. Over something priceless, over what made him Stephen, the little boy stood guard savagely with the only weapons he had.
First of all he would hide. He would hold Teddy in his arms as long as he could, and hide, and let Mother call to him all she wanted to, while he braced himself to endure with courage the tortures which would inevitably follow … the scolding which Mother called “talking to him,” the beating invisible waves of fury flaming at him from all over Mother, which made Stephen suffer more than the physical blows which always ended things, for by the time they arrived he was usually so rigid with hysteria himself that he did not feel them much.
Under the stairs … she would not think of that for a long time. He crept in over the immaculately clean floor, drew the curtains back of him, and sat upright, cross-legged, holding Teddy to his breast with all his might, dry-eyed, scowling, a magnificent sulphurous conflagration of Promethean flames blazing in his little heart.
II
When Lester Knapp stepped dispiritedly out from Willing’s Emporium, he felt, as he usually did, a thin little mittened hand slip into each of his.
“Hello, Father,” said Helen.
“Hello, Father,” said Henry.
“Hello, children,” said Father, squeezing their hands up tightly and looking down into their upturned faces.
“How’s tricks?” he asked, as they stepped off, his lagging step suddenly brisk. “What did the teacher say to that composition, Helen?”
“She said it was fine!” said the little girl eagerly. “She read it out to the class. She said maybe they’d get me to write the play for the entertainment our class is going to give, a history play, you know, something that would bring in Indians and the early settlers and the hiding regicides and what we’ve been studying. I wanted to ask you if you thought I could start it inside one of the houses, the night of an Indian attack, everybody loading muskets and barring the shutters and things, and the old hidden regicide looking out through a crack to see where the Indians were.”
“Oh, that would be great!” cried Henry admiringly, craning his neck around his father to listen. “What’s a regicide?” Henry was three grades behind Helen in school and hadn’t begun on history. His father and sister explained to him, both talking at once. And then they laughed to hear their words clashing together. They swung along rapidly, talking, laughing, interrupting each other, Henry constantly asking questions, the other two developing the imaginary scene, thrilling at the imaginary danger, loading imaginary muskets, their voices chiming out like bells in the cold evening air. Once in a while, Henry, who was small for his age, gave a little animated hop and skip to keep up with the others.
In front of the delicatessen-grocery store at the corner of their street, the father suddenly drew them to a halt. “What was it Mother asked me to bring home with me?” He spoke anxiously, and anxiously the children looked up at him. Suppose he should not be able to remember it!
But he did. It was a package of oatmeal and a yeast-cake. He dragged them triumphantly up from his memory.
They entered the shop and found Aunt Mattie Farnham there, buying ginger cookies and potato salad and boiled ham. “My! I’m ashamed to have you Knapps catch me at this!” she protested with that Aunt Mattieish laugh of hers that meant that she wasn’t really ashamed, or anything but cheerfully ready to make fun of herself. “It’s not Evangeline Knapp who’d be buying delicatessen stuff for her family’s supper at six o’clock at night! We went out in the new Buick this afternoon. … Oh, Lester, she’s a dream, simply a dream! And we went further than we meant. You
