Chapter IV: ’Ware Women

AT breakfast, when Mrs. Overbeck had satisfied herself that her son’s stomach was being properly ministered to, they talked--Norman with some caution and embarrassment, but she with apparent ease. It gave Norman a queer feeling. One would not have thought from her manner that there was anything unusual, let alone irregular, in his situation. She inquired briefly and casually about Isabel (whom she referred to quite familiarly by that name, instead of by any hostile circumlocutions), and Norman was relieved to find that he need not make any further explanation in regard to her. His mother appeared to take Isabel’s going to Paris for granted.... She commented on Mrs. Case and her daughters. “They seemed rather flustered at my visit,” she said. “They are all very fond of the baby,” she added.

“Yes, they are,” he said.

“By the way,” she remarked, “they asked me something about your wife’s health.”

To be sure--he hadn’t warned his mother of that protective fiction.

“Oh,” he said, “I’m supposed to be married, you know--on account of the baby. I told them I had a sick wife in Colorado. You didn’t say anything that would give me away, by any chance?”

“Why, no, I think not. I didn’t discuss you with them. I just pretended not to notice the question, and went on talking about the baby. But you might have told me, Norman. You didn’t write me anything. All I know is what Dr. Zerneke has told me.”

“Oh--you’ve seen Dr. Zerneke too?”

“Not yet. I mean what she wrote to me.”

He might have known. Doubtless his mother and Dr. Zerneke had been in correspondence about him all along. He seemed to sniff a maternal conspiracy.

“What did she say about me?” he demanded.

“Oh, just that you were well, and about your work.”

“What did she say about my work?”

“She said you’d got a new job that paid more money. I was glad to hear that. I didn’t see how you could live on thirty dollars a week in Chicago.”

She hadn’t known, then, about his losing that other job. He felt relieved.

“How is Lucinda?” he asked. He had already inquired about the other members of the family.

“Well, you know how Lucinda gets--in a state of nerves over every little thing. Her new puppy is lost.”

“What!”

“Yes, the new one she got from Schwartz’s. It just got out of the house about ten days ago and disappeared.”

“I remember. It had a black spot or something.”

So Gilbert Rand was mistaken! It wasn’t concerned with him and his baby, Lucinda’s state of nerves. Only her dog--of course....

“She’s thinking of coming on while I’m here.”

“No!” said Norman in helpless protest.

“Oh, well, you might as well let her, Norman. There’s plenty of room here. And your baby will take her mind off her lost puppy.”

“Oh, then, by all means let’s have her,” said Norman ironically. “If my baby can assuage her grief--!”

His irony was lost on his mother--as usual. “Yes,” she said, “I think it would do her good.”

She had brought along her sewing-kit, and after breakfast sat down to do the curtains, which she had somehow already discovered in his bureau.

“Now don’t let me interfere with your usual program,” she said. “Just go ahead and do whatever you want to do. And don’t let me keep any of your friends away.”

He didn’t like to tell her that he hadn’t made any friends.... Really, he ought to bring somebody home, or she would think he was hiding them from her.... He might bring Charlie Beckett here some evening. Charlie was the only one at the office that he knew at all....

“I really don’t know many people yet,” he confessed. “I’ve been so busy. I did get acquainted a little when I was living over at Mrs. Czermak’s place--but that’s about all. And of course there’s Dr. Zerneke. I’ve invited her to go out to dinner with us to-night, by the way.”

“Yes, I’d like to meet her. And now go on out somewhere if you want to. These curtains, and the dishes, will occupy me till dinner-time.”

“But I can’t have you washing my dishes, Mother,” said Norman, scandalized.

“It won’t be the first time I’ve washed your dishes,” she said.

“I’ll do them myself,” he said. “You’re my guest.”

“Don’t be silly, Norman. Run along and leave me alone here for a while.”

And after some feeble protest, he did.... He went over to Mrs. Czermak’s.

“Well,” he asked her, “what do you think of my mother?”

She looked at him in a frightened way.

“Tell me,” she begged, “is she going to take the baby away?”

“Take the baby away!” Norman echoed. “Why, of course not!” And then he added, wonderingly: “I never thought of--such a thing.”

No, but now that he did think of it, it didn’t seem so impossible. If she wanted to, she would be hard to stop.

“Why, did she say anything--when she was here?” he asked.

“It wasn’t what she said. But I’m afraid!” said Mrs. Czermak, and led the way to the nursery. She lifted the sleeping child from his bed and held him close in her arms. “I don’t want her to take him away!” she said.

“Oh, well,” said Norman reassuringly, “I’m sure she hasn’t any such idea.”

But that evening, at dinner with his mother and Dr. Zerneke in the quiet restaurant he had selected, he was troubled by that thought....

Well, wasn’t it what he had once gone home to propose?--that she take his child to raise!... Yes, but that was ages ago. It was the last thing in the world that he wanted, now, to have his son brought up by his family in Vickley.

He was a little shocked to realize how much he had changed his mind, in the last six weeks....

And another thing, that evening at dinner, bothered him--the sense that his mother and Dr. Zerneke were already too well acquainted--that Dr. Zerneke was her friend and ally, rather than his.... There was an air of implicit secret understanding between them--an understanding concerning him.

What were these two women up to?

Yet it was the first time they had met, and they were of such different kinds! They were only trying hard to be polite to one another. All they had in common, after all, was a feminine conviction of his masculine helplessness when it came to babies....