 | Tales of the jazz age |  |
XI
In 1920 Roscoe Button's first child was born. During
the attendant festivities, however, no one thought
it "the thing" to mention that the little grubby boy,
apparently about ten years of age who played around
the house with lead soldiers and a miniature circus, was
the new baby's own grandfather.
No one disliked the little boy whose fresh, cheerful
face was crossed with just a hint of sadness, but to Roscoe
Button his presence was a source of torment. In the
idiom of his generation Roscoe did not consider the
matter "efficient." It seemed to him that his father,
in refusing to look sixty, had not behaved like a "red-blooded
he-man"—this was Roscoe's favorite expression—but
in a curious and perverse manner. Indeed,
to think about the matter for as much as a half an hour
drove him to the edge of insanity. Roscoe believed that
"live wires" should keep young, but carrying it out on
Roscoe rested.
Five years later Roscoe's little boy had grown old
enough to play childish games with little Benjamin
under the supervision of the same nurse. Roscoe took
them both to kindergarten on the same day and Benjamin
found that playing with little strips of colored
paper, making mats and chains and curious and beautiful
designs, was the most fascinating game in the world.
Once he was bad and had to stand in the corner—then
he cried—but for the most part there were gay hours in
the cheerful room, with the sunlight coming in the windows
and Miss Bailey's kind hand resting for a moment
now and then in his tousled hair.
Roscoe's son moved up into the first grade after a
year, but Benjamin stayed on in the kindergarten. He
was very happy. Sometimes when other tots talked
about what they would do when they grew up a shadow
would cross his little face as if in a dim, childish way he
realized that those were things in which he was never to
share.
The days flowed on in monotonous content. He went
back a third year to the kindergarten, but he was too
little now to understand what the bright shining strips
of paper were for. He cried because the other boys
were bigger than he and he was afraid of them. The
teacher talked to him, but though he tried to understand
he could not understand at all.
He was taken from the kindergarten. His nurse,
Nana, in her starched gingham dress, became the centre
of his tiny world. On bright days they walked in the
park; Nana would point at a great gray monster and
say "elephant," and Benjamin would say it after her,
and when he was being undressed for bed that night he
would say it over and over aloud to her: "Elyphant,
on the bed, which was fun, because if you sat down exactly
right it would bounce you up on your feet again,
and if you said "Ah" for a long time while you jumped
you got a very pleasing broken vocal effect.
He loved to take a big cane from the hatrack and go
around hitting chairs and tables with it and saying:
"Fight, fight, fight." When there were people there
the old ladies would cluck at him, which interested him,
and the young ladies would try to kiss him, which he
submitted to with mild boredom. And when the long
day was done at five o'clock he would go up-stairs with
Nana and be fed oatmeal and nice soft mushy foods with
a spoon.
There were no troublesome memories in his childish
sleep; no token came to him of his brave days at college,
of the glittering years when he flustered the hearts
of many girls. There were only the white, safe walls
of his crib and Nana and a man who came to see him
sometimes, and a great big orange ball that Nana pointed
at just before his twilight bed hour and called "sun."
When the sun went his eyes were sleepy—there were no
dreams, no dreams to haunt him.
The past—the wild charge at the head of his men up
San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he
worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy
city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before
that when he sat smoking far into the night in the
gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his
grandfather—all these had faded like unsubstantial
dreams from his mind as though they had never been.
He did not remember. He did not remember clearly
whether the milk was warm or cool at his last feeding or
how the days passed—there was only his crib and Nana's
familiar presence. And then he remembered nothing.
the noons and nights he breathed and over him there
were soft mumblings and murmurings that he scarcely
heard, and faintly differentiated smells, and light and
darkness.
Then it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim
faces that moved above him, and the warm sweet aroma
of the milk, faded out altogether from his mind.
| Tales of the jazz age | |