ELLIE was in the garden, and interrupted his progress toward a belated
dinner. “Father wants to see you,” she called; “at the Club, of course.”
He wondered absently, approaching the Club, what his father wanted.
The rooms occupied the second story of the edifice that housed the
administration of the county; the main corridor was choked by a crowd
that moved noisily toward an auditorium in the rear, but the Club was
silent, save for the click of invisible billiard balls.
His father was asleep in the reading room, a newspaper spread upon his
knees, and one thin hand twisted in his beard. Through an open window
drifted the strains of a band on the Courthouse lawn. The older man
woke, clearing his throat sharply. “Well, Anthony,” he nodded. Anthony
found a chair.
His father leaned forward, regarding him with a keen, kindly gaze. “I'm
told the garage has gone up,” he commenced.
“Sam took his car away; it was Alfred's infernal tinkering; he can't
leave a machine alone.”
“Did you close affairs satisfactorily, stop solvent?”
“There's a little debt of about six dollars.”
The other sought his wallet, and, removing a rubber band, counted six
dollars into Anthony's hand. “Meet that in the morning.” He leaned hack,
tapping the wallet with deliberate fingers. “I suppose you have no plan
for the immediate future,” he observed.
“Nothing right now.”
“I have one for you, though, as 'right now' as this week.”
Anthony listened respectfully, his thoughts still dwelling upon the
beauty of the dusk without, of life. “You have tried a number of things
in the past few years without success. I have started you in a small
way again and again, only to observe the familiar course of a failure
inevitable from your shiftless habits. You are not a bad boy, but
you have no ability to concentrate, like a stream spread all over the
meadow--you have no course. You're a loiterer.”
“Yes, sir,” said Anthony, from the midst of his abstraction.
“You are too old for that now, either it must stop at once, or you will
become definitely worthless. I am going to make a determined effort--I
am going to send you to California, your brother-in-law writes that he
can give you something.”
The term California sounded in Anthony's brain like the unexpected
clash of an immense hell. It banished his pleasant revery in disordered
shreds, filling him with sudden dismay.
“I telegraphed Albert yesterday,” the even tones continued, “and have
his answer in my pocket. You are to go out to him immediately.”
“But that's impossible,” Anthony interrupted; “it just can't be done.”
“Why not?”
He found himself completely at a loss to give adequate expression to
his reason for remaining in Ellerton. His joy was so new that he
had scarcely formulated it to himself, it evaded words, defied
definition--it was a thing of dreams, a vision in a shining garment, a
fountain of life at the bottom of his heart.
“Come; why not?”
“I don't want to go away from Ellerton... just now.”
“That is precisely what you must do. I can understand your desire to
remain close by your mother--she has an excuse for you, assistance, at
every turn.”
“That isn't the reason; it's... it's,” he boggled horribly, “a girl.”
“Indeed,” his father remarked dryly.
Anthony shrunk painfully from the unsympathetic voice of the elder. A
new defiance of his father welled hotly within him, corrupting the bonds
of discipline that had held him lovingly to his parent throughout the
past. A chasm opened between them; and, when Anthony spoke again, it was
with a voice of insipient insubordination.
“It isn't the silly stuff you think,” he told the other; “I'm engaged!”
“What on?” pithily came the inquiry. “Unfortunately I can't afford the
luxury of a daughter-in-law. I thought you were something more of a man
than to bring your wife into your mother's house.”
“I sha'n't; we can get along until I... find work.”
“Do you mean that your wife will support you?”
“Not altogether; she will help until--until--” he stopped miserably
before the anger confronting him in the other's gaze: it was useless to
explain, he thought; But if his father laughed at him, at his love, he
would leave the room and never see him again. “I can't see why money is
so damned holy!” he broke out; “why it matters so infernally where it
comes from; it seems to me only a dirty detail.”
“It is the measure of a man's honor,” the elder Ball told him
inexorably; “how it is made or got stamps you in the world. I am
surprised to hear that you would even consider taking it from a woman,
surprised and hurt. It shows all the more clearly the necessity for your
going at once into a hard, healthy existence. Your mother will get you
ready; a couple of days should do it.”
“... all unexpected,” Anthony muttered; “I must think about it, see some
one. I'll--I'll talk to you to-morrow. That's it,” he enunciated more
hopefully, “to-morrow--”
“Entirely unnecessary,” his father interrupted, “nothing to be gained by
delay or further talk. The thing's arranged.”
“I think I won't go,” Anthony told him slowly. The other picked up the
paper, smoothing out the creases. “Very well,” he replied; “I dare say
your mother will do something for you.--Women are the natural source of
supplies for the sort of person you seem at the point of becoming.” A
barrier of paper, covered with print in regular columns, shut one from
the other.
Anthony burned under a whelming sense of injustice. He decided that he
would leave the room, his father, forever; but, somehow, he remained
motionless in his chair, casting about in his thoughts for words with
which to combat the elder's scorn. He thought of Eliza; she smiled
at him with appealing loveliness; he felt her letter in his pocket,
remembered her boundless generosity. He couldn't leave her! The band in
the square below was playing a familiar operatic lament, and the refrain
beat on his consciousness in waves of despairing and poignant longing.
A sea of misery swept over him in which he struggled like a spent
swimmer--Eliza was the far, silver shore toward which he fought. It
wasn't fair--a sob almost mastered him--to ask him to go away now, when
he had but found her.
“It's not Siberia,” he heard his father say, “nor a life sentence; if
this--this 'girl' is serious, you will be closer working for her in
California than idle in Ellerton.”
“I don't want to go away from her,” he whispered; “the world's such
a hell of a big, empty place... things happen.” He dashed some bright
tears from his eyes, and, turning his back on the other, gazed through
the window at the tops of the maple trees--a black tracery of foliage
against the lights below.
“Two or three years should set you on your feet, give you an opportunity
to return.” Eternity could scarcely have seemed more appalling than the
term casually indicated by his father, it was unthinkable! A club member
entered, fingering the racked journals on the long table, exchanging
trivial comments with the older Ball. It seemed incredible to Anthony,
in the face of the cataclysm which threatened him, that the world should
continue to revolve callously about such topics. It was an affront to
the gravity, the dignity, of his suffering. He swiftly left the room.