H

UPROOTED

BY RUTH SUCKOW

AT had brought "the relationship" together at the old home this summer. She had written that

the old folks were getting pretty feeble, especially Ma, ever since that fall she had had in the winter, and that it was time something was being done. Everyone had felt that it could not be put off much longer.

They were all in the parlor now. They had come there with one accord after dinner, as if there had been a secret compact among them. There was a general conviction that the time had come to "settle something." The sense of conspiracy that attends family conclaves lay heavy upon them. The air was thick with undercurrents of feeling, schemes, secret alliances and antipathies. They had all eaten too much and they sat with the discomfort of middle age in the stiff old-fashioned chairs. The three men were making a pretense that the whole affair amounted to nothing. They refused to meet the meaning glances, full of dire warning and portent, which their wives cast at them from time to time. Whenever, in a pause of the furious squeaking of Jen's rocking chair, the clatter of dishes and shrill children's voices sounded loud from the kitchen, they were suddenly stricken, condemned with an obscure sense of guilt.

This was their chance. The old people and the children, who were "not supposed to know," were out of the way. Ma had been persuaded to lie down in her bedroom. Pa had been sent to show the chickens and the cow to Hat's

little Benny. Jen's Margaret and Hat's Allie had been bribed and commanded to wash the dinner dishes. Jen's Herbert had been the worst to dispose of. Just when they thought they were rid of him, he would be discovered in the doorway, staring at them through the big tortoise shell spectacles that he had just begun to wear, solemn and uncannily disconcerting. Finally Sam had sent him down town with fifty cents to consume chocolate sodas in Vielle's Ice Cream Parlor.

But it was hard to make use of the chance they had tried so long to get. The little parlor was suddenly and overwhelmingly eloquent of the life that had been in it. The close musty air, thick with the smell of the carpet, told that it had not been opened for months. It had a dank chill, even in the clear warmth of the September afternoon. The enlarged pictures on the walls looked as if they had frozen into their silver frames. The closed organ, with its insertions of faded silk, was a tomb of wheezy melodies. The big illustrated Bible with its steel clasp lay beside the Life of Abraham Lincoln-which Art had peddled once on the knitted lace doily of the stand. Knitted tidies were fastened with ribbons to the backs of chairs. A black memorial card on one of the little balconies of the organ stated in gold that John Luther Shafer had died at the age of thirty-two-"The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away." A large pink shell lay beside the door. A bunch of withered pampas grass stuck up from a blue-painted vase in the corner.

The women had entered into a discussion of operations -the one neutral spot on which they could still meet. The men let out a conscientious word from time to time. They crossed and recrossed their knees.

Sam tried to make Lou look at him. He wanted to get

back to the hotel. He could not get settled in the bumpy springs of the great orange plush chair where he was sitting. Sam had grown used to easy chairs.

66

. . . Oh yes, it was an awful thing," Lou was saying. "They had to cut away one whole side of the breast." Tch-tch went the women's tongues.

“Well—it's a miracle what they can do these days," said Jen after a pause.

Sam gave a bounce in the orange chair. "Well, folkses, isn't it about time we were getting down to business?" he asked, with a heavy assumption of cheerfulness.

A sudden solemn quiet fell upon them all. They cleared their throats and changed positions. The magnificent pretense of a pleasant family gathering which they had been instinctively keeping up was shattered. Sam twisted in his chair with the sense that he had made a social blunder. Lou, who should have backed him up, had put on an air of elaborate unconcern. The other women had a hungry look of suppressed excitement. Little Henry, Hat's husband, who was the poorest and had the least to say, gazed with a mild boredom at his swinging foot.

Sam refused to give up his air of cheerful briskness. He was convicted, but his riches made him bold. When it came right down to it, he had the say-so, and they all knew it.

"Now, let's just talk this thing over quietly among us and come to some decision that will satisfy everyone," he said blandly. He had put that neatly, he thought.

Jen shot a triumphant glance at Art. They had talked it over in the night, subduing Herbert, who had a bed. on the floor of their room, and who kept whimpering that they wouldn't let a fellow sleep, by proclaiming that they

had matters to discuss which he could know nothing about. But when Margaret, who was in the next room with her Aunt Hat, had come bounding in and announced that they had better shut up if they did not want Aunt Hat to hear every single word they were saying about her, they had been subdued themselves. So they had not got much farther than Jen's deciding that "Sams" ought to take the old folks if anyone did, for they were certainly best able to afford it. "But they'll get out of it some way, you just see if they don't," she had prophesied bitterly.

"Now don't let them make you agree to anything you don't want," she had warned Art. "I guess we've got something to say in this matter. It concerns us just as much as it does them, and I think the whole relationship ought all to decide it equally.”

But it was hard to be firm in the sight of Lou's elaborate silver coiffure. Both Jen and Hat-between whom, as those most likely to be "put upon," there was a defensive alliance had agreed that it would be all right if they had to deal with Sam alone, but that Lou was sure to be at the bottom of the whole thing. Whatever was done would be Her Doings. There she sat, with her large hard bosom plastered with silver and beading, and her maddening air of being only remotely, and by virtue of her own graciousness, connected with the affairs of the Shafer family. Jen raged inwardly. Lou hadn't always been so much. It was Sam who had made the money, not Lou, but of course he would do whatever She said.

"Well-suppose we get started," repeated Sam. “Art, you ought to have something to suggest. You preachers usually have something to say," he added with ponderous jocularity.

Art ran his hand slowly over the wrinkles of his waist

coat. He felt Jen's eyes burn into him. She was sitting rigid.

"Well of course we want to do what's best for the old people," he began, in his ministerial tone, for which he hated himself.

"Oh, of course, certainly," Sam agreed hastily.

"Yes, but just what is best for Mother and Father Shafer? That's what we all want to know," Lou put in sweetly.

Jen gave a jerk. "I'm sure that Arthur and I are willing to do anything," she cried touchily, with her air of putting them all in wrong. "I'm sure that no one has been a better son than Arthur, whether anyone realizes it or not."

Lou smiled inscrutably. They all knew that Sam was Mother Shafer's favorite child.

Art flushed. "It's a delicate thing to decide," he murmured.

"Yes, of course," said Sam soothingly. "We're all willing to do whatever is of course."

Now that the thing was started, he felt at ease. If it wasn't for the way that confounded chair kept sticking into him! He sat, large and amenable, but prosperous. He had the look of hotels and Pullman cars that made them acknowledge his leadership. He had white hair thinning on a rosy skull, and a neat gray mustache.

"Now, as I've figured it out," he went on smoothly, "it's practically impossible for mother and father to spend another winter here alone. Isn't that about the size of it, Hat?"

"I guess so," Hat muttered.

"Yes, of course. We all see that. The place is in frightful condition. They can't keep it up—"