On coming to the table that evening Claude begged his mother to excuse
him for not having dressed for dinner, on the ground that he had an
engagement with Billy Cheever. Mrs. Masterman pardoned him with a
gracious inclination of the head that made her diamond ear-rings
sparkle. No one in the room could be unaware that she disapproved of
Claude's informality. Not only did it shock her personal delicacy to
dine with men who concealed their shirt-bosoms under the waistcoats they
had worn all day, but it contravened the aims by which during her entire
married life she had endeavored to elevate the society around her. She
herself was one to whom the refinements were as native as foliage to a
tree. "It's all right, Claudie dear; but you do know I like you to dress
for the evening, don't you?" Without waiting for the younger son to
speak, she continued graciously to the elder: "And you, Thor. What have
you been doing with yourself to-day?"
Her polite inclusion of her stepson was meant to start "her men," as she
called them, in the kind of conversation in which men were most at ease,
that which concerned themselves. Thor replied while consuming his soup
in the manner acquired in Parisian and Viennese restaurants frequented
by young men:
"Got a patient."
Hastily Claude introduced a subject of his own. "Ought to go and see
'The Champion,' father. Hear it's awfully good. Begins with a
prize-fight--"
But the father's attention was given to Thor. "Who've you picked up?"
"Fay's wife--Fay, the gardener."
"Indeed? Have to whistle for your fee."
"Oh, I know that--"
"Thor, _please_!" Mrs. Masterman begged. "Don't eat so fast."
"If you know it already," the father continued, "I should think you'd
have tried to squeak out of it." He said "know it alweady" and "twied to
squeak," owing to a difficulty with the letter _r_ which gave an
appealing, childlike quality to his speech. "If you start in by taking
patients who are not going to pay--"
Claude sought another diversion. "What does it matter to Thor? In three
months' time he'll be able to pay sick people for coming to him--what?"
"That's not the point," Masterman explained. "A doctor has no right to
pauperize people"--he said "pauper-wize people"--"any more than any one
else."
"Oh, as to that," Thor said, forcing himself to eat slowly and sit
straight in the style commended by his stepmother, "it won't need a
doctor to pauperize poor Fay."
"Quite right there," his father agreed. "He's done it himself."
Thor considered the moment a favorable one for making his appeal.
"Claude and I have been talking him over--"
"The devil we have!" Claude exclaimed, indignantly.
"What's that?" Masterman's handsome face, which after his day's work was
likely to be gray and lifeless, grew sharply interrogative. Time had
chiseled it to an incisiveness not incongruous with a lingering air of
youth. His hair, mustache, and imperial were but touched with gray. His
figure was still lithe and spare. It was the custom to say of him that
he looked but the brother of his two strapping sons.
Claude emphasized his annoyance. "Talking him over! I like that! You
blow into the office just as I'm ready to come home, and begin
cross-questioning me about father's affairs. I tell you I don't know
anything about them. If you call that talking him over--well, you're
welcome to your own use of terms."
The head of the house busied himself in carving the joint which had been
placed before him. "If you want information, Thor, ask me."
"I don't want information, father; and I don't think Claude is fair in
saying I cross-questioned him. I only said that I thought he and I ought
to do what we could to get you to renew Fay's lease."
"Oh, did you? Then I can save you the trouble, because I'm not going
to."
The declaration was so definite that it left Thor with nothing to say.
"Poor old Fay has worked pretty hard, hasn't he?" he ventured at last.
"Possibly. So have I."
"But with the difference that you've been prosperous, and he hasn't."
Masterman laughed good-naturedly. "Which is the difference between me
and a good many other people. You don't blame me for that?"
"It's not a question of blaming any one, father. I only supposed that
among Americans it was the correct thing for the lucky ones to come to
the aid of the less fortunate."
"Take it that I'm doing that for Fay when I get him out of an impossible
situation."
Thor smiled ruefully. "When you get him out of the frying-pan into the
fire?"
"Well," Claude challenged, coming to his father's aid, "the fire's no
worse than the frying-pan, and may be a little better."
"I've seen the girl," Mrs. Masterman contributed to the discussion.
"She's been in the greenhouse when I've gone to buy flowers. I must say
she didn't strike me very favorably." The two brothers exchanged glances
without knowing why. "She seemed to me so much--so very much--above her
station."
"What _is_ her station?" Thor asked, bridling. "Her station's the same
as ours, isn't it?"
The father was amused. "The same as _what_?"
"Surely we're all much of a muchness. Most of us were farmers and
market-gardeners up to forty or fifty years ago. I've heard," he went
on, utilizing the information he had received that afternoon, "that the
Thorleys used to hire out to the Fays."
"Oh, the Thorleys!" Mrs. Masterman smiled.
"The Mastermans didn't," Archie said, gently. "You won't forget that, my
boy. Whatever you may be on any other side, you come from a line of
gentlemen on mine. Your grandfather Masterman was one of the best-known
old-school physicians in this part of the country. His father before him
was a Church of England clergyman in Derbyshire, who migrated to America
because he'd become a Unitarian. Sort of idealist. Lot of 'em in those
days. Time of Napoleon and Southey and Coleridge and all that. Thought
that because America was a so-called republic, or a so-called democracy,
he'd find people living for one another, and they were just looking out
for number one like every one else. Your Uncle Sim takes after him. Died
of a broken heart, I believe, because he didn't find the world made over
new. But you see the sort of well-born, high-minded stock you sprang
from."
Thor lifted his big frame to an erect position, throwing back his head.
"I don't care a fig for what I sprang from, father. I don't even care
much for what I am. It strikes me as far more important to see that our
old friends and neighbors--who are just as good as we are--don't have to
go under when we can keep them up."
"Yes, when we can," Thor's father said, with unperturbed gentleness;
"but very often we can't. In a world where every one's swimming for his
own dear life, those who can't swim have got to drown."
"But every one is not swimming for his own dear life. Most of us are
safe on shore. You and I are, for example. And when we are, it seems to
me the least we can do is to fling a life-preserver to the poor chaps
who are throwing up their hands and sinking."
Mrs. Masterman rallied her stepson indulgently. "Oh, Thor, how
ridiculous you are! How you talk!"
Claude patted his mother's hand. He was still trying to turn attention
from bearing too directly on the Fays. "Don't listen to him, mumphy.
Beastly socialist, that's what he is. Divide up all the money in the
world so that everybody'll have thirty cents, and then tell 'em to go
ahead and live regardless. That'd be his way of doing things."
But the father was more just. "Oh no, it wouldn't. Thor's no fool! Has
some excellent ideas. A little exaggerated, perhaps, but that'll cure
itself in time. Fault of youth. Good fault, too." He turned
affectionately to his elder son, "Rather see you that way, my boy, than
with an empty head."
Thor fell silent, from a sense of the futility of talking.