Free The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead Page B

long-dead mother, who came from the good old days when mothers dreamed of their sons’ being President, Poor woman, good woman: she little thought when she dropped a tear at my being sent to work in the fish market that in the fish market I would meet my fate. Ahead of him, not far uphill, was his harbor and his fate.
    “Another thing,” said Sam to himself, “is that going away now, Madeleine and I will have time to use our heads, get things straight: the love that harms another is not love—but what desires beset a man! They are not written in the calendar of a man’s duty; they are part of the secret life. Some time the secret life rises and overwhelms us—a tidal wave. We must not be carried away. We have each too much to lose.” He strode on, “Forget, forget!” He struggled to remember something else, something cheerful. They had taken him to Dirty Jack’s house to celebrate his appointment; there they had made merry, Sam being at the top of his form. There was a young creature there, timid, serious, big-eyed, with a black crop who turned out to be Dirty Jack’s (that is, Old Roebuck’s) only daughter, the one who did the charming flower painting. What an innocent, attentive face! It positively flamed with admiration; and the child-woman’s name was Gillian. He had made up a poem on the spur of the moment:
    Gillian, my Gillian,
    He would be a villy-un,
    Who would be dally-dillyin’
    About a Lacertilian
    When he could look at you!
    “By Jiminy!” ejaculated Sam, who had strange oaths, since he could never swear foul ones, “genius burns: nothing succeeds like success! And did Dirty Jack jerk back his head and give me one of those looks of his with his slugs of eyes, to intimidate me; whereas, no one noticed him at all, at all, poor old Dirty Jack.” He began to hum with his walking, “Oh, my darling Nelly Gray, they have taken you away.”
    “By Gee,” he exclaimed half aloud, “I am excited! A pity to come home to a sleeping house, and what’s not asleep is the devil incarnate; but we’re a cheerful bunch, the Pollits are a cheerful bunch. But wait till my little gang hears that they’re going to lose their dad for a nine-month! There’ll be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth!” and Sam clapped his hands together. He loved this Thirty-fourth Street climb, by the quiet houses and under the trees. He had first come this way, exploring the neighborhood, a young father and widower, holding his year-old Louisa in his arms, with her fat bare legs wagging, and, by his side, elegant, glossy-eyed Miss Henrietta Collyer, a few months before their marriage; and that was ten years ago. Then afterwards, with each and all of the children, up and down and round about, taking them to the Observatory, the parks, the river, the woodland by the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, or walking them out to Cabin John, teaching them birds, flowers, and all denizens of the woodland.
    Now Old David Collyer’s Tohoga House, Sam’s Tohoga House, that he called his island in the sky, swam above him. A constellation hanging over that dark space midmost of the hill, which was Tohoga’s two acres, was slowly swamped by cloud.
    He came up slowly, not winded, but snuffing in the night of the hot streets, looking up at the great house, tree-clouded. Now he crossed P Street and faced the hummock. On one side the long galvanized-iron back fence of his property ran towards Thirty-fifth Street and its strip of brick terrace slums. Over this fence leaned the pruned boughs of giant maples and oaks. The old reservoir was away to the right. A faint radiance showed Sam that the light in the long dining room was on. He ran up the side steps and stole across the grass behind the house, brushing aside familiar plants, touching with his left hand the little Colorado blue spruce which he had planted for the children’s “Wishing-Tree” and which was now five feet high.
    He was just on six feet and therefore could peer into the long room.