The Second Generation Part 8

"Drink ain't the only bad habit," replied Hiram. "It ain't the worst, though it looks the worst. The boy's got brains. It ain't right to allow him to choke 'em up with nonsense."

Ellen's expression was a.s.sent.

"Tell him to come down to the mill next Monday," said Hiram, after another silence, "and tell him to get some clothes that won't look ridiculous." He paused, then added; "A man that ain't ready to do anything, no matter what so long as it's useful and honest, is good for nothing."

The night had bred in Arthur brave and bold resolves. He would not tamely submit; he would cast his father off, would go forth and speedily carve a brilliant career. He would show his father that, even if the training of a gentleman develops tastes above the coa.r.s.eness of commerce, it also develops the mental superiority that makes fleeing chaff of the obstacles to fame and wealth. He did not go far into details; but, as his essays at Harvard had been praised, he thought of giving literature's road to distinction the preference over the several others that must be smooth before him. Daylight put these imaginings into silly countenance, and he felt silly for having lingered in their company, even in the dark. As he dressed he had much less than his wonted content with himself. He did not take the same satisfaction in his clothes, as evidence of his good taste, or in his admired variations of the fas.h.i.+on of wearing the hair and tying the scarf. Midway in the process of arranging his hair he put down his military brushes; leaning against the dressing table, he fixed his mind upon the first serious thoughts he had ever had in his whole irresponsible, sheltered life. "Well," he said, half-aloud, "there _is_ something wrong! If there isn't, why do I feel as if my spine had collapsed?" After a long pause, he added: "And it has! All that held it steady was father's hand."

The whole lofty and beautiful structure of self-complacence upon which he had lounged, preening his feathers and receiving social triumphs and the adulation of his "less fortunate fellows" as the due of his own personal superiority, suddenly slipped from under him. With a rueful smile at his plight, he said: "The governor has called me down." Then, resentfully, and with a return of his mood of dignity outraged and pride trampled upon: "But he had no right to put me up there--or let me climb up there." Once a wrong becomes "vested," it is a "vested right," sacred, taboo. Arthur felt that his father was committing a crime against him.

When he saw Adelaide and his mother their anxious looks made him furious.

So! They knew how helpless he was; they were pitying him. _Pitying_ him!

Pitying _him_! He just tasted his coffee; with scowling brow he hastened to the stables for his saddle horse and rode away alone. "Wait a few minutes and I'll come with you," called Adelaide from the porch as he galloped by. He pretended not to hear. When clear of the town he "took it out" on his horse, using whip and spur until it gripped the bit and ran away. He fought savagely with it; at a turn in the road it slipped and fell, all but carrying him under. He was in such a frenzy that if he had had a pistol he would have shot it. The chemical action of his crisis precipitated in a black ma.s.s all the poison his nature had been absorbing in those selfish, supercilious years. So long as that poison was held in suspense it was imperceptible to himself as well as to others. But now, there it was, unmistakably a poison. At the sight his anger vanished.

"I'm a beast!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, astonished. "And here I've been imagining I was a fairly decent sort of fellow. What the devil have I been up to, to make me like this?"

He walked along the road, leading his horse by the bridle slipped over his arm. He resumed his reverie of the earlier morning, and began a little less dimly to see his situation from the new viewpoint. "I deserve what I'm getting," he said to himself. Then, at a twinge from the resentment that had gone too deep to be ejected in an instant, he added: "But that doesn't excuse _him_." His father was to blame for the whole ugly business--for his plight within and without. Still, fixing the blame was obviously unimportant beside the problem of the way out. And for that problem he, in saner mood, began to feel that the right solution was to do something and so become in his own person a somebody, instead of being mere son of a somebody. "I haven't got this shock a minute too soon," he reflected. "I must take myself in hand. I--"

"Why, it's you, Arthur, isn't it?" startled him.

He looked up, saw Mrs. Whitney coming toward him. She was in a winter walking suit, though the day was warm. She was engaged in the pursuit that was the chief reason for her three months' retirement to the bluffs overlooking Saint X--the preservation of her figure. She hated exercise, being by nature as lazy, luxurious, and self-indulgent physically as she was alert and industrious mentally. From October to July she ate and drank about what she pleased, never set foot upon the ground if she could help it, and held her tendency to hips in check by daily ma.s.sage. From July to October she walked two or three hours a day, heavily dressed, and had a woman especially to attend to her hair and complexion, in addition to the _ma.s.seuse_ toiling to keep her cheeks and throat firm for the fight against wrinkles and loss of contour.

Arthur frowned at the interruption, then smoothed his features into a cordial smile; and at once that ugly ma.s.s of precipitated poison began to redistribute itself and hide itself from him.

"You've had a fall, haven't you?"

He flushed. She, judging with the supersensitive vanity of all her self-conscious "set," thought the flush was at the implied criticism of his skill; but he was far too good a rider to care about his misadventure, and it was her unconscious double meaning that stung him.

She turned; they walked together. After a brief debate as to the time for confessing his "fall," which, at best, could remain a secret no longer than Monday, he chose the present. "Father's begun to cut up rough," said he, and his manner was excellent. "He's taken away my allowance, and I'm to go to work at the mill." He was yielding to the insidious influence of her presence, was dropping rapidly back toward the att.i.tude as well as the accent of "our set."

At his frank disclosure Mrs. Whitney congratulated herself on her shrewdness so heartily that she betrayed it in her face; but Arthur did not see. "I suppose your mother can do nothing with him." This was spoken in a tone of conviction. She always felt that, if she had had Hiram to deal with, she would have been fully as successful with him as she thought she had been with Charles Whitney. She did not appreciate the fundamental difference in the characters of the two men. Both were iron of will; but there was in Whitney--and not in Hiram--a selfishness that took the form of absolute indifference to anything and everything which did not directly concern himself--his business or his physical comfort.

Thus his wife had had her way in all matters of the social career, and he would have forced upon her the whole responsibility for the children if she had not spared him the necessity by a.s.suming it. He cheerfully paid the bills, no matter what they were, because he thought his money's power to buy him immunity from family annoyances one of its chief values. She, and everyone else, thought she ruled him; in fact, she not only did not rule him, but had not even influence with him in the smallest trifle of the matters he regarded as important.

The last time he had looked carefully at her--many, many years before--he had thought her beautiful; he a.s.sumed thenceforth that she was still beautiful, and was therefore proud of her. In like manner he had made up his mind favorably to his children. As the bills grew heavier and heavier, from year to year, with the wife and two children a.s.siduously expanding them, he paid none the less cheerfully. "There is some satisfaction in paying up for them," reflected he. "At least a man can feel that he's getting his money's worth." And he contrasted his luck with the bad luck of so many men who had to "pay up" for "homely frumps, that look worse the more they spend."

But Arthur was replying to Mrs. Whitney's remark with a bitter "n.o.body can do anything with father; he's narrow and obstinate. If you argue with him, he's silent. He cares for nothing but his business."

Arthur did not hesitate to speak thus frankly to Mrs. Whitney. She seemed a member of the family, like a sister of his mother or father who had lived with them always; also he accepted her at the valuation she and all her friends set upon her--he, like herself and them, thought her generous and unselfish because she was lavish with sympathetic words and with alms--the familiar means by which the heartless cheat themselves into a reputation for heart. She always left the objects of her benevolence the poorer for her ministrations, though they did not realize it. She adopted as the guiding principle of her life the cynical philosophy--"Give people what they want, never what they need." By sympathizing effusively with those in trouble, she encouraged them in low-spiritedness; by lavis.h.i.+ng alms, she weakened struggling poverty into pauperism. But she took away and left behind enthusiasm for her own moral superiority and humanity.

Also she deceived herself and others with such fluid outpourings of fine phrases about "higher life" and "spiritual thinking" as so exasperated Hiram Ranger.

Now, instead of showing Arthur what her substratum of shrewd sense enabled her to see, she ministered soothingly unto his vanity. His father was altogether wrong, tyrannical, cruel; he himself was altogether right, a victim of his father's ignorance of the world.

"I decided not to submit," said Arthur, as if the decision were one which had come to him the instant his father had shown the teeth and claws of tyranny, instead of being an impulse of just that moment, inspired by Mrs. Whitney's encouragement to the weakest and worst in his nature.

"I shouldn't be too hasty about that," she cautioned. "He is old and sick. You ought to be more than considerate. And, also, you should be careful not to make him do anything that would cut you out of your rights."

It was the first time the thought of his "rights"--of the share of his father's estate that would be his when his father was no more--had definitely entered his head. That he would some day be a rich man he had accepted just as he accepted the other conditions of his environment--all to which he was born and in which consisted his t.i.tle to be regarded as of the "upper cla.s.ses," like his a.s.sociates at Harvard. Thinking now on the insinuated proposition that his father might disinherit him, he promptly rejected it. "No danger of his doing that," he a.s.sured her, with the utmost confidence. "Father is an honest man, and he wouldn't think of anything so dishonest, so dishonorable."

This view of a child's rights in the estate of its parents amused Mrs.

Whitney. She knew how quickly she would herself cut off a child of hers who was obstinately disobedient, and, while she felt that it would be an outrage for Hiram Ranger to cut off his son for making what she regarded as the beginning of the highest career, the career of "gentleman," still she could not dispute his right to do so. "Your father may not see your rights in the same light that you do, Arthur," said she mildly. "If I were you, I'd be careful."

Arthur reflected. "I don't think it's possible," said he, "but I guess you're right. I must not forget that I've got others to think of besides myself."

This patently meant Janet; Mrs. Whitney held her discreet tongue.

"It will do no harm to go to the office," she presently continued. "You ought to get some knowledge of business, anyhow. You will be a man of property some day, and you will need to know enough about business to be able to supervise the managers of your estate. You know, I had Janet take a course at a business college, last winter, and Ross is in with his father and will be active for several years."

Thus it came about that on Monday morning at nine Arthur sauntered into the offices of the mills. He was in much such a tumult of anger, curiosity, stubbornness, and nervousness as agitates a child on its first appearance at school; but in his struggle not to show his feelings he exaggerated his pose into a seeming of bored indifference. The door of his father's private room was open; there sat Hiram, absorbed in dictating to a stenographer. When his son appeared in the doorway, he apparently did not realize it, though in fact the agitation the young man was concealing under that unfortunate manner was calmness itself in comparison with the state of mind behind Hiram's mask of somber stolidity.

"He's trying to humiliate me to the depths," thought the son, as he stood and waited, not daring either to advance or to retreat. How could he know that his father was shrinking as a criminal from the branding iron, that every nerve in that huge, powerful, seemingly impa.s.sive body was in torture from this ordeal of accepting the hatred of his son in order that he might do what he considered to be his duty? At length the young man said: "I'm here, father."

"Be seated--just a minute," said the father, turning his face toward his boy but unable to look even in that direction.

The letter was finished, and the stenographer gathered up her notes and withdrew. Hiram sat nerving himself, his distress accentuating the stern strength of his features. Presently he said: "I see you haven't come dressed for work."

"Oh, I think these clothes will do for the office," said Arthur, with apparent carelessness.

"But this business isn't run from the office," replied Hiram, with a gentle smile that to the young man looked like the sneer of a tyrant.

"It's run from the mill. It prospers--it always has prospered--because I work with the men. I know what they ought to do and what they are doing. We all work together here. There ain't a Sunday clothes job about the place."

Arthur's fingers were trembling as he pulled at his small mustache. What did this tyrant expect of him? He had a.s.sumed that a place was to be made for him in the office, a dignified place. There he would master the business, would gather such knowledge as might be necessary successfully to direct it, and would bestow that knowledge in the humble, out-of-the-way corner of his mind befitting matters of that kind. And here was his father, believing that the same coa.r.s.e and toilsome methods which had been necessary for himself were necessary for a trained and cultured understanding!

"What do you want me to do?" asked Arthur.

Hiram drew a breath of relief. The boy was going to show good sense and willingness after all. "I guess you'd better learn barrel-making first,"

said he. He rose. "I'll take you to the foreman of the cooperage, and to-morrow you can go to work in the stave department. The first thing is to learn to make a first-cla.s.s barrel."

Arthur slowly rose to follow. He was weak with helpless rage. If his father had taken him into the office and had invited him to help in directing the intellectual part of that great enterprise, the part that in a way was not without appeal to the imagination, he felt that he might gradually have accustomed himself to it; but to be put into the mindless routine of the workingman, to be set about menial tasks which a mere muscular machine could perform better than he--what waste, what degradation, what insult!

He followed his father to the cooperage, the uproar of its machinery jarring fiercely upon him, but not so fiercely as did the common-looking men slaving in torn and patched and stained clothing. He did not look at the foreman as his father was introducing them and ignored his proffered hand. "Begin him at the bottom, Patrick," explained Hiram, "and show him no favors. We must give him a good education."

"That's right, Mr. Ranger," said Patrick, eying his new pupil dubiously.

He was not skilled in a.n.a.lysis of manner and character, so Arthur's superciliousness missed him entirely and he was attributing the cold and vacant stare to stupidity. "A regular d.a.m.n dude," he was saying to himself. "As soon as the old man's gone, some fellow with brains'll do him out of the business. If the old man's wise, he'll buy him an annuity, something safe and sure. Why do so many rich people have sons like that?

If I had one of his breed I'd shake his brains up with a stave."

Arthur mechanically followed his father back to the office. At the door Hiram, eager to be rid of him, said: "I reckon that's about all we can do to-day. You'd better go to Black and Peters's and get you some clothes.

Then you can show up at the cooperage at seven to-morrow morning, ready to put in a good day's work."

He laid his hand on his son's shoulder, and that gesture and the accompanying look, such as a surgeon might give his own child upon whom he was performing a cruelly painful operation, must have caused some part of what he felt to penetrate to the young man; for, instead of bursting out at his father, he said appealingly: "Would it be a very great disappointment to you if I were to go into--into some--some other line?"

"What line?" asked Hiram.

"I haven't settled--definitely. But I'm sure I'm not fitted for this." He checked himself from going on to explain that he thought it would mean a waste of all the refinements and elegancies he had been at so much pains to acquire.

"Who's to look after the business when I'm gone?" asked Hiram. "Most of what we've got is invested here. Who's to look after your mother's and sister's interests, not to speak of your own?"

"I'd be willing to devote enough time to it to learn the management,"

said Arthur, "but I don't care to know all the details."

It was proof of Hiram's great love for the boy that he had no impulse of anger at this display of what seemed to him the most priggish ignorance.