Gaslight Sonatas Part 9

Nervousness had laid hold of her so that in and out among the dishes her hand trembled.

"You see, Harry, it's the free City College, and--"

"I know that free talk. So was high school free when you talked me into it, but if it ain't one thing it's been another. Cadet uniform, football suit--"

"The child's got talent for invention, Harry; his manual-training teacher told me his air-s.h.i.+p model was--"

"I got ninety in manual training when the other fellers only got seventy."

"I guess you're looking for another case like your father, sitting penniless around the house, tinkering on inventions up to the day he died."

"Pa never had the business push, Harry. You know yourself his churn was ready for the market before the Peerless beat him in on it."

"Well, your son is going to get the business push trained into him. No boy of mine with a poor daddy eats up four years of his life and my salary training to be a college sissy. That's for the rich men's sons. That's for the Clarence Ungers."

"I'll pay it back some day, pop; I--."

"They all say that."

"If it's the money, Harry, maybe I can--"

"If it didn't cost a cent, I wouldn't have it. Now cut it out--you hear?

Quick!"

Edwin Ross pushed back from the table, struggling and choking against impending tears. "Well, then, I--I--"

"And no shuffling of feet, neither!"

"He didn't shuffle, Harry; it's just his feet growing so fast he can't manage them."

"Well, just the samey, I--I ain't going into the theayter business. I--I--"

Mr. Ross flung down his napkin, facing him. "You're going where I put you, young man. You're going to get the right kind of a start that I didn't get in the biggest money-making business in the world."

"I won't. I'll get me a job in an aeroplane-factory."

His father's palm came down with a small crash, s.h.i.+vering the china. "By Gad! you take that impudence out of your voice to me or I'll rawhide it out!"

"Harry!"

"Leave the table!"

"Harry, he's only a child--"

"Go to your room!"

His heavy, unformed lips now trembling frankly against the tears he tried so furiously to resist, Edwin charged with lowered head from the room, sobs escaping in raw gutturals.

Mr. Ross came back to his plate, breathing heavily, fist, with a knife upright in it, coming down again on the table, his mouth open, to facilitate labored breathing.

"By Heaven! I'll cowhide that boy to his senses! I've never laid hand on him yet, but he ain't too old. I'll get him down to common sense, if I got to break a rod over him."

Handkerchief against trembling lips, Mrs. Ross looked after the vanished form, eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g.

"Harry, you--you're so rough with him."

"I'll be rougher yet before I'm through."

"He's only a--"

"He's rewarding the way you scrimped to pay his expenses for nonsense clubs and societies by asking you to do it another four years. You're getting your thanks now. College! Well, not if the court knows it--"

"He's got talent, Harry; his teacher says he--"

"So'd your father have talent."

"If pa hadn't lost his eye in the Civil War--"

"I'm going to put my son's talent where I can see a future for it."

"He's ambitious, Harry."

"So'm I--to see my son trained to be something besides a looney inventor like his grandfather before him."

"It's all I want in life, Harry, to see my two boys of you happy."

"It's your woman-ideas I got to blame for this. I want you to stop, Millie, putting rich man's ideas in his head. You hear? I won't stand for it."

"Harry, if--if it's the money, maybe I could manage--"

"Yes--and scrimp and save and scrooge along without a laundress another four years, and do his was.h.i.+ng and--"

"I--could fix the money part, Harry--easy."

He regarded her with his jaw dropped in the act of chewing.

"By Gad! where do you plant it?"

"It--it's the way I scrimp, Harry. Another woman would spend it on clothes or--a servant--or matinees. It ain't hard for a home body like me to save, Harry."

He reached across the table for her wrist.

"Poor little soul," he said, "you don't see day-light."

"Let him go, Harry, if--if he wants it. I can manage the money."

His scowl returned, darkening him.

"No. A. E. Unger never seen the inside of a high school, much less a college, and I guess he's made as good a pile as most. I've worked for the butcher and the landlord all my life, and now I ain't going to begin being a slave to my boy. There's been two or three times in my life where, for want of a few dirty dollars to make a right start, I'd be, a rich man to-day. My boy's going to get that right start."