The Restless Sex

After a while he went upstairs, cautiously, the soft carpet muffling his tread.

Jim, seated on the side of his bed, was being worshipped, permitting it, accepting it. Stephanie, cross-legged on the floor, adored him with awed, uplifted gaze, her clasped hands lying in her lap.

"To be a writer," Jim condescended to explain, "a man has got to work like the dickens, study everything you ever heard of, go out and have adventures, notice everything that people say and do, how they act and walk and talk. It's a very interesting profession, Steve… What are you going to be?"

"I don't know," she whispered, " – nothing, I suppose."

"Don't you want to be something? Don't you want to be celebrated?"

She thought, hesitatingly, that it would be pleasant to be celebrated.

"Then you'd better think up something to do to make the world notice you."

"I shouldn't know what to do."

"Father says that the thing you'd rather do to amuse yourself is the proper profession to take up. What do you like to do?"

"Ought I to try to write, as you do?"

"You mustn't ask me. Just think what you'd rather do than anything else."

The girl thought hard, her eyes fixed on him, her brows slightly knitted with the effort at concentration.

"I – I'd honestly really rather just be with dad – and you– "

The boy laughed:

"I don't mean that!"

"No, I know. But I can't think of anything… Perhaps I could learn to act in a play – or do beautiful dances, or draw pictures – ?" her voice continuing in the rising inflection of inquiry.

"Do you like to draw and dance and act in private theatricals?"

"Oh, I never acted in a play or danced folk-dances, except in school. And I never had things of my own to make pictures with – except once I had a piece of blue chalk and I made pictures on the wall in the hall."

"What hall?"

"It was a very dirty hall. I was punished for making pictures on the wall."

"Oh," said the boy, soberly.

After a moment the boy jumped up:

"I'm hungry. I believe luncheon is nearly ready. Come on, Steve!"

The child could scarcely speak from pride and happiness when the boy condescended to take her hand and lead her out of that enchanted place into the magic deeps below.

At nine-thirty that evening Stephanie made the curtsey which had been taught her, to Cleland Senior, and was about to repeat the process to Cleland Junior, when the latter laughed and held out his hand.

"Good night, Steve," he said reassuringly. "You've got to be a regular girl with me."

She took his hand, held it, drew closer. To his consternation, he realized that she was expecting to kiss him, and he hastily wrung her hand and sat down.

The child's face flushed: she turned to Cleland Senior for the kiss to which he had accustomed her. Her lips were quivering, and the older man understood.

"Good night, darling," he said, drawing her close into his arms, and whispered in her ear gaily: "You've scared him, Steve. He's only a boy, you know."

Her head, buried against his shoulder, concealed the starting tears.

"You've scared him," repeated Cleland Senior. "All boys are shy about girls."

Suddenly it struck her as funny; she smiled; the tears dried in her eyes. She twisted around, and, placing her lips against the elder man's ear, she whispered:

"I'm afraid of him, but I do like him!"

"He likes you, but he's a little afraid of you yet."

That appealed to her once more as exquisitely funny. She giggled, snuggled closer, observed by Jim with embarrassment and boredom. But he was too polite to betray it.

Stephanie, with one arm around Cleland's neck, squeezed herself tightly against him and recounted in a breathless whisper her impressions of his only son:

"I do like him so much, Dad! He talked to me upstairs about his school and all the boys there. He was very kind to me. Do you think I'm too little for him to like me? I'm growing rather fast, you know. I'd do anything for him, anything. I wish you'd tell him that. Will you?"

"Yes, I will, dear. Now, run upstairs to Janet."

"Shall I say good night to Jim again?"

"If you like. But don't kiss him, or you'll scare him."

They both had a confidential and silent fit of laughter over this; then the child slid from his knees, dropped a hasty, confused curtsey in Jim's direction, turned and scampered upstairs. And a gale of laughter came floating out of the nursery, silenced as Janet shut the door.

The subdued glow of a lamp fell over father and son; undulating strata of smoke drifted between them from the elder man's cigar.

"Well, Jim?"

"Yes, Father."

"Do you like her?"

"She's a – funny girl… Yes, she's a rather nice little kid."

"We'll stand by her, won't we, Jim?"

"Yes, sir."

"Make up to her the lost days – the cruellest injustice that can be inflicted – the loss of a happy childhood."

"Yes, sir."