Chapter XV: Family Breakfast

AT eight o’clock a bell sounded through the Overbeck house, to tell everybody to get up. At eight-thirty it would sound again, telling them to come to breakfast.

It had been so as long as Norman could remember--except that on week-days the bell sounded an hour earlier. And that bell, like the voice of J. J. Overbeck himself, had always been obeyed. But this morning, though the bell struck into his sleeping consciousness, he did not want to wake up. He wanted to hold fast to the dream he was dreaming.... Something about being off on a ship, alone....

Ten minutes later his mother shook him gently by the shoulder, saying: “Norman, you’d better get up. It’s eight-forty. And you know how Father feels about having us all at the breakfast table.”

“All--right!” he said reluctantly, opening his eyes.

He watched her go out of the room--the little, sensible, practical wife of the great J. J. Overbeck....

What was that dream? It had vanished completely.

He sprang out of bed. And then he remembered yesterday--Isabel--the baby--Dr. Zerneke--his errand here. It seemed unreal.

He shaved hurriedly, so as not to be late to breakfast.

Doris came down a little late, sleepy and petulant. “I don’t see why I can’t be allowed to have my sleep out when I’m at a party the night before,” she said, as she dug her spoon into her grapefruit. “Everybody else sleeps on Sunday morning!”

“You should have thought of that last night,” said Lucinda vindictively.

“You know,” said her mother placatingly, “that Father likes us all to be at the breakfast table with him.”

“Yes, I know,” said Doris, “but I don’t see the sense of it. It’s a darn silly rule, if you ask me.”

They all waited for J. J. Overbeck’s quiet thunders and lightnings to descend upon the rebel.

“If that’s the effect that late hours have on your temper,” said her father gravely, “I think perhaps this had better be the last of them, until you are old enough to have learned some self-control.”

Doris struggled with her tears for a moment, and then jumped up and ran crying from the room.

Norman looked down at his plate, ashamed. What a home!...

It was always like this--meaningless tyrannies, with which they all made such terms as they could. Their mother didn’t seem to notice it. Lucinda had been crushed by it into what she was. He himself had learned how to get along with his father. Doris was stubborn, but she would have to learn.... And he had taken it all for granted.

He had known that other homes were not like this. But as a boy he had accepted it as one accepts the climate. Away at college, he had preferred to forget it. But coming back to Vickley again, he had begun to take it for granted once more.

His way of getting along with his father was to acquiesce publicly in his authority, but to retain a secret independence of opinion. It occurred to him now that this was rather cowardly. Even Doris’s undignified outbreaks were more honest. He had always sympathized with her in silence. Now he wanted to break that pattern and speak up in her defense. And so he said abruptly in the silence that followed his sister’s departure from the room:

“I think Isabel is quite right.”

He realized the slip of his tongue as they stared at him.

“Who’s Isabel?” asked Lucinda.

He flushed. “I meant Doris. She should be allowed to sleep after a late party. Especially on Sunday.”

“Who is Isabel?” Lucinda repeated.

His defiance, such as it was, had been completely spoiled by that silly slip of the tongue. They would all be wondering who Isabel was....

He ignored Lucinda’s question and spoke sharply, forgetting his accustomed dignity:

“Father has no right to punish her that way--for a mere trifle!”

His father was surprised, and for a moment or two said nothing at all. At last he remarked quietly:

“Late hours don’t seem to agree with you, either, Norman.”

Lucinda’s lips were framing the question: “Who--?”

“Well,” Norman demanded of his father belligerently, “are you going to send _me_ to bed at ten o’clock?”

“Norman!” said his mother in sensible, practical disapproval of such nonsense.

“If you are going to behave like a child,” said his father, “I ought to send you from the table like one.”

“I’d prefer to go,” said Norman. He rose and marched out of the room--feeling as though he were ten years old.

In the hall he saw Doris coming downstairs. He waited for her.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m going back and apologize,” she said lightly. “It’s the only thing to do.”

Their mother’s practical voice floated out from the breakfast room.

“Norman, if you’re going out, take your overcoat.”

“Where are you running off to?” asked Doris.

She was helping him on with his overcoat. “To see Madge, I suppose!”

“Madge? Oh--why--yes.”

He had managed to forget Madge....

“Wait a moment,” said Doris. “I’ll bring you a fresh handkerchief.” She snatched the old one out of his breast pocket, ran up the stairs, came back and tucked the clean one in. “There!” she said.

Outside, he glanced over next door at the new frame building--the home his father was building for him and Madge--almost finished.... That was just like his father--to put them next door, where he could run their affairs for them, as if they were children.