The Two of Them

I

THERE were only the two of them at first, and they were rather poor. They did n’t mind, though, because they knew there would be more money later on. Being young and poor was n’t ‘fun,’ as so many people tried to tell you, but it could be borne if you felt that better days were coming; if you were sure, for instance, that Julian would eventually be making a much larger salary, and that sometime you would n’t have to depend wholly on a salary anyway, the investments being enough: Julian clerked for a LaSalle Street brokerage house and had an eye for the market tables.

Their slender budget was one reason why they had n’t had Bernard right away. Amy’s mother thought them selfish. She had long talks with Amy, and afterward Julian would come home to find his wife white-lipped and taut. Then he knew that Mother had been over, and he would say that he wished to God she’d let them alone; which made Amy cry and say, ‘Oh, she means all right. She just does n’t understand.’ For there was another reason, besides money, why Amy did n’t want a baby: she feared childbirth; she feared the physical pain of it. ‘It’s been twenty-six years since Mother had me, and she’s forgotten that babies bring agony, and sometimes . . . ’ She never said ‘death’ aloud.

‘Am I a coward, Julian? Tell me I’m not a coward.’

And he said, ‘No, my dear, it’s not cowardice; it’s’ — but for a long time whatever he said was of no use, for Amy only argued self-accusingly, ‘ I’m afraid. I’m afraid.’ So he talked to her patiently, made her listen. He told her that the risk was much less than formerly. It would be no worse than — not so bad as — having her appendix out, and she had not minded that at all, once she had got up her nerve. Gradually, after a period of months, he won her over. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I am no longer afraid; when we have enough in the bank, we’ll have Bernard — since you want him so much.’

‘You want him too, don’t you?’ he asked.

‘I want just you. I need no one else.’

Her attitude hurt Julian more than he let her know. Finally he rationalized it: Amy was one of those women who have no maternal feelings until they have had a child — she would love the baby as much as he, but first she had to have it. To him, a son would be the completion, the crowning, of their marriage. His own father — he who first bore the name of Bernard — had died three months before Julian was born, and his mother had been too busy trying to rear the family on the small insurance income to give them companionship. So Julian, hearing of other fathers from other sons, idealized the paternal relationship. A boy and his father — he realized he was sentimental about it; yet he knew too that it must be the greatest love in life. What love could be greater?

Because he wanted Bernard so much he decided, and Amy only too readily agreed, that they should n’t have him until he could come into the right sort of home. This was what Amy’s mother did not know, and, if she had known, would not have understood. Bernard was to be born into a house where scrimping and meanness were past and forgotten. He was to have the best of everything, right from the start. They talked of it often, Julian especially. His mother had not been particularly pleased when he was born. ‘I wanted you,’ she once told him,‘but — but even before you came the rest of us had n’t had too much to eat.’

They were certain that the child would be a boy. Sometimes Amy said teasingly, ‘And if it should be a girl by any chance . . .’ But Julian interrupted quickly with, ‘He won’t. He’ll be a boy. He’ll be Bernard.’ He said that he would hate a girl; what he wanted was to see a boy grow up, to know him and love him from the time he was a child till he became a man. It was not that he longed for someone to carry on his name. He was n’t vain. He just wanted a boy because — well, he just wanted a boy. Amy laughed at that, and said, ‘You’d get used to a daughter.’ But he always shook his head. ‘I would n’t. I’d drown it.’ A girl baby was ‘it,’ and Bernard was ‘he.’

They were living on the South Side then, in a tiny apartment in a not very good district. It took Julian a long time to get to the office, but the place had its advantages. It was cheap, for Chicago, and fairly close to a park. Also, it was a good distance from Amy’s mother; she lived in a family hotel in Oak Park, a hotel filled with widows her own age with whom she could play whist and discuss each other’s children.

Coming home at night was the part Julian liked best. Although their building was identical with the hundreds which surrounded it, and he had to climb four darkish flights — Amy was waiting. If she had had her own way, she would n’t have been there; she too would have been coming home from an office. Julian would n’t hear of that, however. Wives did n’t hold jobs in 1911. They stayed at home and had babies. But, said Amy, what if your baby is being postponed? The matter was a source of arguments, even quarrels.

‘Well, at least we’d have more money,’ she said. ‘We should n’t have to count every cent.’

‘Don’t talk like that. You know why we’re saving. Meanwhile, your place is here.’

‘Woman’s place,’ she mocked. ‘In the home.’

Then Julian would sulk. ‘I want you here, right here, when I get home.’ Her job would come when Bernard came. Until then, he would work — work hard and long — and she would wait.

So she waited, her real day beginning at dusk when she heard his step on the stairs, or often dwindling to nothing as he telephoned to say that he was working at the office that evening.

‘I’m lonely, Julian,’ she would cry.

Sometimes he asked himself, ‘Am I selfish?’ And answered, ‘No; this is the way it has to be — for now.’

II

Nineteen-thirteen, fourteen....... Julian was making good money, and making it work for him by means of shrewd, sound investments. War meant only increased profits, for when it finally might have touched him he was rejected by the army because of a heart ailment, leaving him nothing to do but give, sometimes more than he could afford, to relief funds. Still, the market was up and his savings grew. People wondered, Amy’s mother mostly, why they did n’t move.

‘You’re foolish not to make him take a better place. Why, it’s ridiculous, with all he must be earning.’

‘We’re not ready yet, Mother. Julian says later.’

Amy was so hard occasionally. Almost as if she hated her mother!

‘But why? Why?’

Yet when they did rent a large, handsome apartment in Evanston, a few months later, Mother was no less puzzled, and no more content.

‘You’re crazy, Amy. Look at all this room. From the South Side to Evanston in one jump! It is n’t as if you had children, you know.’

Amy smiled. ‘I’m going to have a baby,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have a son.’

‘At last!’ Mother began to weep, and then to talk, lowering her voice to give old wives’ warnings.

For a while Amy had thought that after they had saved all this money Bernard was n’t coming. ‘Remember,’ she said to Julian, ‘we’re neither of us so awfully young.’ (He was thirty-five, she two years younger.) ‘They say that women who don’t — well, who don’t particularly care for children often can’t have them.’ And Julian said, ‘You’ll care for him when he comes — and he will come.’

Almost a year had gone by before the day arrived when she could tell him. Together they laughed, and Amy cried. Seeing her tears, he said, ‘You are n’t afraid? That has n’t come back, has it?’

She laughed too, then. ‘No — no. I’m happy — that’s all. Because you’re happy.’

‘Bernard!’ said Julian. Bernard was going to be born into peace and plenty. He was going to learn to walk in this living room — a fine, tasteful living room with a view out toward the Lake. No poverty for him. He should never feel that he was unwanted.

Somehow Amy’s fears of childbirth all dissipated the moment she knew that she was going to have a child. But her confinement was a bad one, and she suffered a great deal. During those last weeks, Julian almost wished that they were n’t going to have a baby. What if—if Amy died? What good would a child, even Bernard, do him then? He had told Amy that it would be all right, that having a baby was no worse than — how could he have said things like that? What did he know about it? As he waited for the doctor to come out of the hospital room, he realized that he looked like the pictures of the young father in the comic weeklies; but he did n’t care. People made jokes about this. They smiled and said, as he himself had said, ‘Oh, she’ll pull through all right.’ Meanwhile, on the other side of that wall, Amy screamed.

Then, after years, the door opened and the doctor came toward him.

‘Your wife is fine,’ he said. ‘And you have a son.’

Back home, Amy well again, they settled down to their real life, for Julian felt that their life had just begun, that up to now they had simply been marking time. Amy’s mother was satisfied now. ‘Don’t you feel better, Julian, now that you ’re a father? Are n’t you sorry that you and Amy did n’t have the baby before? Just think — he would have been able to talk to you by this time.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. . . .’ Julian, looking down at the crib, smiled.

Amy smiled too. Would she, she wondered, ever become as unseeing as her mother? And then she took the baby in her arms. This was Bernard. This was what they had been waiting for, and what she had feared. Her fears were gone now, but oddly enough she as yet felt no great love for the child — though Julian had said that it would come. She was grateful that he was a boy, and that she had given Julian his wish. Love might come later. And even if it did n’t . . .

Julian worked harder than ever after the baby was born, remaining late at the office weeks on end, staying Saturday afternoons, sometimes being away whole Sundays. Amy told him that he should take things easier now. They had Bernard, and Bernard had everything he could want. But Julian said he must keep on. ‘You see, we have to look ahead. There’s school, and then college.’ This while Bernard was still at Amy’s breast — a dark little bundle with her eyes and nose.

‘But, Julian, his college fund has been in the bank for months. More than he’ll ever need.’

‘He might want even more than that. To be — to be an artist, perhaps. Why should he grub at business as his father has done? ’

‘And is doing.’

Yes, there were school and college. Julian had gone to public school and to no college at all. Bernard was to go to Lake Forest, and then perhaps to some Eastern school; Exeter, or maybe Groton. Afterward there would be Princeton.

Even now Julian followed Princeton football games with a frantic interest, which was the more unusual because he was not naturally interested in sports. He would wave the paper in front of the baby’s gurgling face. ‘See! See what we did to ’em!’ Amy told him not to be silly, but somehow she liked it. Julian thought so much of Bernard, loved him so.

III

Her own attitude toward the baby was changing. From thinking of him as a gift which she had bought Julian and paid for in blood and sweat and torture, she began slowly — when it started she never knew — to love him; terribly, even achingly. And he meant more to her as time went on. There was no one else, after all, with Julian at the office most of the time, and with Mother, fortunately, in Oak Park. They had n’t many friends in Evanston — only a few couples to play bridge with now and then. She never felt safe in accepting an invitation, for only too often had Julian telephoned at the last moment to say that he was remaining in town to work.

Anyway, she preferred to stay at home with the baby. It seemed incredible, but here was Bernard noticing things, learning to talk, to walk. Her mother said that they were making fools of themselves over the child. She said they had no lives of their own, that they simply existed for the boy.

On Julian’s desk — a big, mahogany desk now, in a private office, with a secretary in the next room — stood a large photograph of Amy and Bernard. Sometimes during business conferences he would realize that he had been staring at the picture, not hearing what was being said.

‘Oh — sorry. Guess my mind was wandering.’

‘Well, mine would wander, too, if it had something like that to wander to.’ Bargainers came to learn that the one way to soften the shrewd Julian was to compliment him on his family.

As Bernard got older Amy found herself less lonely, for, though Julian was at the office even more than ever, she at least had the boy, who was bright, intelligent, and good company. She did think, of course, that he should see more of his father. Julian’s enlarging interests necessitated monthly business trips to New York, during which the two of them were left alone, except for the maid. Yet it was fun to be alone with the child, to have its complete attention. Gradually they became accustomed to being without Julian, and when he came home his son would be afraid at first, as if this man who picked him up and kissed him so soundly were a stranger. Bernard ran to Amy then. ‘There, there!’ she laughed.

Julian laughed too, and, laughing, concealed a wound. Well, he could n’t be as close to them as he wished and still continue to pile up the fortune from which they would both benefit. After a while he could relax and enjoy what he was now slaving to earn. He did n’t want the money for himself; he spent little personally, and could have got along on much less. His goal was ahead of him; when he reached it, he would stop.

There was an argument when it came time for Bernard to enter kindergarten. Amy wanted a governess to come in; Julian wanted the child to go to one of the North Shore private schools. ‘It will be better for him, Amy. He’s too much of a Mother’s boy.’

That rankled, and in defense she said: ‘Mother’s boy! You’re jealous because he won’t cuddle up to you. He’s — he’s afraid of you. ’

After that, he tried to be at home more frequently. He found, however, that Amy had been right: the boy was afraid of him. All his jokes — blundering, heavy jokes — and his caresses only made Bernard silent and ill at ease. Still, he thought, it’s just his age; he’s no longer a baby and not yet a real boy. When he’s older, it’ll be different. When he’s older, we’ll have good times together as father and son should, and as I’ve always planned. When he’s older . . .

IV

Then Bernard was older. It was hard for Julian to realize it, but the years had come and gone until now the boy was ten, and in the academy at Lake Forest. Amy would n’t hear of his being a boarding student. The chauffeur (there was a chauffeur now, and three cars, and a house in Winnetka) must drive him back and forth to school daily. Bernard himself wanted it that way, too. Once there had been a bad storm and he had been obliged to stay at the school overnight. Amy telephoned him, torturing herself while he pleaded with her to come for him. She spent the night crying, and when Julian tried to comfort her by saying that it was all right, that every boy was lonesome his first night under another roof, she told him he did n’t know what he was talking about. ‘ You don’t know Bernard! He might be the neighbors’ child for all the attention you pay him.’

Yet Julian knew that whenever he did try to be intimate with the boy — whenever, for instance, he took him for a Sunday drive alone, just the two of them — Amy was angry. On their return she would be cold and indifferent. ‘Well, Bernard, did you have a nice time?’ And Bernard always said, in a strained, formal way, ‘ Yes, Mum. We drove out north, and then came back through . . . ’ He did n’t say, and neither did his father, that they had hardly exchanged a word during the long ride. Only Mike, talking to the cook, commented on those difficult silences. ‘So there they were behind me, both like tombs. Sometimes the old man would say, “See over there, Son — that’s such-and-such.” And the kid’d say, “Yes, Father. I see, Father,” coldlike. Such a pair!’

The boy was not always so uncommunicative. Julian knew that, for sometimes he came home and found Bernard laughing and talking with his mother; but at the sight of him they always stopped suddenly, as if they shared some secret. Julian cried, ‘Hello, hello! What’s up between you two?’ Amy rarely answered directly, — she was growing strangely silent toward him, — so Bernard usually said, ‘Oh, nothing, Father. I was just telling Mum about something that happened at school.’ Then, when Julian said, ‘What is it?’ he would stammer and reply, ‘Oh — oh, nothing.’ Occasionally Julian insisted that he be told too; but he soon stopped that, for Bernard would narrate some childish incident and end lamely with, ‘It was n’t anything, you see. Just silly, I guess.’ Meanwhile Amy sat by and looked blankly out of the window, or hurried from the room on some trivial errand.

And after dinner things were no better. Julian sat in his big chair, listening to the two of them at the piano in the small music room; listening to her shaky soprano and the boy’s shrill treble. He would make an effort to call back what he, what they, had lost and were losing.

‘Amy, dear, that was nice. Play it again.’

But, though she might repeat the song, the life had gone out of it and the music soon stopped. Together she and Bernard came wandering back into the drawing-room, Amy to take up some novel, her son to sit watching her.

The clock ticked through the long evening, and Julian knew that he had failed again. Then it was ten, and Amy was saying, ‘Come, Bernard, it’s time for bed.’

‘Oh, Mum. . . . Well, all right.’

He crossed to Julian’s chair to shake his hand dutifully.

‘Good night, Father.’

Why did the boy never look at you, but keep his eyes on the rug, the walls, on his mother waiting at the foot of the stairs — anywhere but on yours?

‘Good night, Bernard.’

There were times, of course, when the three of them were quite happy together. Amy seemed to set the mood. When she was gay, Bernard was gay; when she was cool and distant, Bernard was silent toward Julian — and a little afraid. Then it was that Amy spoke an oblique language of hostility; then Julian was no longer Julian, but ‘your father.’ ‘Did n’t you hear, Bernard? Your father asked you how you are getting along with your French..... Bernard, your father says you may have a pony next summer.’

‘Thank you, Father. Thank you very much.’

Later she might become herself again, grow warm, natural; and, with her, Bernard, chattering on as if he were used to his father’s presence. Then again, for some unknown reason, the barrier would rise. Perhaps it was when she and Julian were alone together, coming home from some infrequent dinner party, sitting in the back of the car and watching the passing lights.

‘It was a nice evening, was n’t it, Amy?’

Silence. He looked at her dark profile silhouetted against the gleaming glass.

‘Was n’t it, Amy?’

‘Yes,’ and the coldness of that monosyllable told him what lay in store for him during the coming days, even weeks — until the time she relented and admitted him again into the circle of love. What had he done? Stupid, perhaps, to badger her with senseless questions; but after she had been so pleasant, why should she so suddenly, and without reason, change? He could have stood it better if it were not for her influence over Bernard, who, when next they met, would again be as a stranger to him — shy, unnatural, even seemingly afraid. One against him, his wife, he could have borne; but two . . .

‘Who is my son?’ he asked himself. ‘What is he?’

Once, when Bernard was thirteen, Julian decided to have things out with Amy. For almost a month he had been in Coventry, and now he accused her — awkwardly, uncertainly — of setting the boy against him, or at least of doing all she could to prevent any real companionship between them. She sat and listened without interruption as he blunderingly stated his position. He said that for years she had managed their son so as to keep him from his father, making impossible the thing he had most desired.

‘ You know how much I wanted to be to him,’ he said, ‘and what I wanted him to be to me, to us. Don’t you remember how, even before he was born . . . ?’

She made no sign.

‘What is the matter with me?’ he asked. ‘Or with you? Or with him? This is not a family. This is not what we planned when we hoped for a son.’ Feeling suddenly weak, as if fighting against darkness, he stopped short, waiting for her to speak. She rose, then, ready to leave the room.

‘You think I poisoned his mind,’ she said.

‘No — no. I, I merely meant —’

She laughed, without mirth. ‘Well, I did n’t. His mind is his own, and always has been. But his heart — ’

‘ His heart — ? ’

She looked straight at him, yet did not seem to see him. ‘Bernard is like me,’ she said. ‘He can love but one person at a time. Why? Either because he has so little love to give, or because he loves so fiercely. I don’t know which it is. I only know it’s true, for I am like that also.’

Somehow he understood at once, he even knew what she was about to say, yet when she paused before going on he did not move or speak.

‘When I married you,’ she said, ‘I needed no other thing or person. You were all I had, and all I ever cared to have. But you wanted a son; you wanted Bernard. So he was born. And then, after he came, somehow I —’

‘Stop!’ he cried. ‘Don’t say it.’

‘ I ’ve got to say it! I started to love him, and my love grew and grew until there was no room . . . ’

But Julian had brushed past her — away, away, out through the door, upstairs to his bed, where he lay in the dark, trembling.

V

At sixteen, Bernard went East to school. While the three of them sat silently watching the back of Mike’s neck as he drove them to the station, Julian all at once realized that the boy was almost a man. Other fathers were always telling him that when the children went away to school it was the end. ‘It’s never the same, you know. They come home, of course, but it’s never the same.’ The same as what, he wondered.

At any rate, he thought — and he was not bitter, for all bitterness had long since left him, even as he had ceased, after that night, to hope for success in his attempts to break the wall separating him from his wife and son — at any rate, this parting would be less heartbreaking than most; for him, at least, since a son could not leave a father to whom he had never been bound. But Amy — he knew that she must be suffering an almost physical pain, though only her tightly clenched hands gave any hint of strain. After she had finally agreed that an Eastern school was the place for Bernard, she had gone about preparing for his departure stoically. She had even decided to send him away alone, instead of going with him to see him safely installed for his first year. Julian saw her reasoning: if it was to be good-bye, then let it be here; she could not have left the boy in strange surroundings, homesick already. Now, at least he was pleasantly excited by the unknown schoolboy world which lay before him.

As the car swung round a comer his hand jolted against Bernard’s knee. How thin and bony the boy was! It was time he went away and mixed with other lads his age. He had been too long under his mother’s care.

‘School will fatten you up, Son, put muscle on you.’

Amy, sitting on the other side of Bernard, gazed out at the Loop traffic. ‘Sometimes your father speaks of you as if you were an animal,’ she said.

‘But he is.’ Julian tried to be jocular. ‘We all are. And the stronger an animal is, the better.’

Amy turned and pressed her hand on Bernard’s arm. ‘Life lies in the spirit, Bernard, not the flesh. . . . And remember what I said about games. Some of them are so dangerous. Football, you know. . .

Julian lighted a cigarette. Again he had said the wrong thing. Always, with them, he said the wrong thing. At one moment he might feel that he had Bernard, that at last he knew him — and then, somehow, some way, the moment fled and he had lost him. Yet he was forever trying to reach him once more, hoping really to get at him. Why did he keep on trying? After all, he knew definitely — had known for years — how matters stood. But something made him go on.

If only the boy would talk! If only he would come out and say, as Amy had said, ‘I can love but one person at a time. There is no room. . . .’ If Bernard would say that, Julian felt that he would be grateful. But he did not say that. Instead, he only looked at his father with a meaning Julian could not fathom. His eyes were large and dark (Amy’s eyes), and they did not reveal what lay behind them.

At the station, Mike went on ahead with the luggage. As Julian walked along beside his wife and his son, he wished that the parting were over. He dreaded it, for Amy’s tenseness was a bad omen. Bernard, perhaps dreading it also, began to talk about little things — a book he had neglected to pack, whether he would meet any boys on the train. He seemed unusually gay. ‘He’s afraid of wounding her,’ thought Julian. ‘He knows how much he means to her — that’s why he’s asking her those questions, speaking those unimportant words. He does not talk to me.’

They reached the train shed, then Bernard’s Pullman. Five minutes left — five minutes in which Amy must break with the son from whom she had never been separated.

Even that short time was too much for her. ‘I shan’t wait,’ she said. ‘Your father can put you on.’

Then, as if she were the child and he the mother, Bernard took her in his arms, and he was almost as tall as she was. ‘Good-bye, Mother.’ Amy held him tightly, and then she kissed him. ‘Good-bye, my dear, my dear.’ She began to cry, and tore herself from him and started to walk hurriedly, breaking into a run, down the platform.

Julian looked at the boy. He was taking it well — staring after her almost stolidly, watching her until she disappeared from view. He turned to his father.

‘She loves you, Bernard,’ said Julian. ‘You’re all she has.’

‘I know.’

A queer thing for him to say — ‘ I know.’

The porter started to take up the step. ‘Ready, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s all right,’ said Bernard. ‘I’ll hop on.’ He was looking at his father.

Now that the time had come, Julian discovered that he did n’t know how to say good-bye. He wanted to kiss the boy, as Amy had done, for he knew that although there had been little enough show of affection between them in the past, there would be even less after this year was over and Bernard came back with schoolboy formalities and conventions. So he took Bernard’s hand and squeezed it hard.

‘Good-bye, Son. Write to your mother often — and to me now and then. Work a lot, and play a lot, too.’ He stopped, for Bernard was crying. Crying? Why was he crying now? He had not cried when Amy left him.

‘Bernard!’ he said, and as the word left him the boy clutched him and kissed him full on the mouth. Julian clasped him close, lifting him completely off the ground and straining him to himself as if he were a child. The father could not speak, but only felt his son’s face pressed to his.

Then the train started to move, and the boy scrambled up the steps and disappeared into the car without looking back.

Julian stood motionless as the train rolled down into the blackness. Thinking of nothing, hardly breathing, he kept his eyes on the red-and-yellow disk on the last car until it went out like a spark. When it was gone he let his breath go with a sharp gasp. Into his mind flashed four words: ‘I have a son.’ Immediately he remembered Amy, waiting in the car, waiting for him to take her back to an empty house. He faced about and started quickly toward the street, with long, sure strides. Suddenly he stopped short.

‘No, I must not tell her,’ he thought. ‘I must not let her know.’

And he began to walk again, slowly, and his face was like a mask.