[11] ... poor kid ... destined as he was for the exhibitionism of
lecture-platform, rostrum, grand-stand, David had not escaped the
Schuyler femur. From the hip to the knee, with most of us, the line was
too short, making us a top-heavy-looking lot. We girls managed to hide
it. But with the boys, Henry excepted, the effect was stockiness. We
used to laugh about “the Schuyler femur.” It is the answer, I think, to
the fact that my brother Dave was what is known as a static speaker,
remaining quietly behind his table or stand. It is also the answer to
why, with the one exception of the Landsdowne painting, there are no
full-length portraits of him. From the waist up, he gave the appearance
of towering solidity. The effect of the long waist and slightly too
short legs, even in the Landsdowne, was to make him appear stocky.
[12] ... as I used to say of our Davey, long before he showed the
slightest precocity other than a sort of walking-encyclopedia
garrulousness, for which we used to hold Henry to hilarious account,
that he was the typical Schuyler. And so he was, embodying in his very
babyishness the square, plodding quality of a small war-tank.
[Illustration: Decorative Image]
_Chapter Eight_
For the half-dozenth time, his mother, through the buzz of grown-up
talk, had turned her rather breathless face upon him and pantomimed
Davey to go to bed. By mouthing back violently and stretching his eyes
and doing somewhat fearful grimaces with his mouth to indicate that he
was the reverse of sleepy, it was possible to appease her from time to
time.
The supper-table had long since been cleared, and the red-rep cover
back in its place, and the silver bowl supported by the silver cherubs,
in its center. There were seven apples in it. They shone under the
swinging-lamp that had the buckeye dangling from it.
Henry was speaking. The faces about the table swam in light. Mathilda.
The Old Gentleman. Bek. Winslow. Claire. Emma. Phil. Henriette Simpson,
who never missed her Tuesday-night dinner with the family, and who was
a sufficiently privileged old friend to “sit in.”
The scene reminded Davey of something. Something too vague to
capture. Flat on his stomach on the carpet-sofa in the corner, elbows
propped and chin in palms, he regarded it, when he could keep his
fascinated eyes away from the to-bed pantomime of Mathilda. Ah, he
knew! It reminded him, that circle of conclave, of a picture torn from
Redpath’s Universal History, that hung in Henry’s dusty little old
office, up over Schlemmer’s Hardware Store on High Street, “Signing
of the Declaration of Independence.” The solemn array. The women,
by half-closing the eyes, could be made to look like men in wigs.
Henriette Simpson looked like a horse. But a nice horse. Such a kind,
slender, solemn horse. A brown horse with a braided mane. But she, too,
by squinting, could be brought to look wigged. Only the Old Gentleman
spoiled the illusion. He was peeling an apple. You could never conceive
of so much meticulousness crammed into the peeling of an apple. He held
it poised between thumb and forefinger, as a sculptor might carve a
hand holding a pearl in that position.
It was impossible, after the introduction of the peeling of that apple,
not to keep the eye riveted. Even Mathilda left off her pantomime to
watch it, and rose once, tiptoeing to a cupboard for a plate, which
she slid under, and which the Old Gentleman kept shoving away. He was
removing the peel, after his habit, in a single long curlicue. The
thinnest possible ribbon. Gradually the eyes of the entire group, with
the single exception of Claire, who kept her gaze fastened on the
weaving motion of her needle over the round of a darning ball, became
focused upon the intact unwinding of that apple-peel.
Henry was speaking. He had a solemn, monotonous voice and to David,
even then, a wise, intoning voice.
“It is unfortunate that Father did not consult with me before calling
you all together at this time. I have never been anything but settled
in my mind about it. In fact, the party has already had my written
refusal for twelve hours.”
“Stuff,” said Phil, watching the winding of the rind, and his purplish
face pursed as he leaned forward across folded arms. “A man can change
his mind. I can have Senator Burton on the telephone and that letter in
the waste-basket in five minutes.”
“You’re talking nonsense, Phil.”
“Why, any man they put up in your place will be a stuffed shirt! There
is not another possibility in the state except you and Scott Baring,
who’s never going to get out of that French Lick sanatorium unless on a
stretcher.”
“That may be,” said Henry, in his dry way, and strumming with his dry
fingers, and his eyes on the slowly unwinding rind. “But my mind is
made up.”
“If it was me,” said Emma, in that airy, cozy way of hers, tapping
her darning-ball and holding a red-and-brown-checked sock off at
arm’s-length, “I’d take it, just to show those horrid old Democrats
that this state has never really had a District Attorney before.”
This remark was deemed worthy of nobody’s rejoinder. Emma was seldom
answered. Nor minded.
“Well,” said Phil, who kept wanting to shout but after the first word
or two restrained it and toned himself down, “if you ask me, and you
don’t, I’ll say it’s a dog-gone shame that the party comes into a Jim
Crow town like Centralia to pick its man, does a Schuyler the honor to
put him on the sure-fire ticket for District Attorney and....”
“You’re right, Phil, I don’t ask you. This is the kind of question a
man has to decide between God and his own soul.”
“Yes, but what the dickens can your soul and your God find in a
proposition like this except honor?”
“Son, take not the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain.”
“Excuse me, Mama, but, good Lord, look at the honor for himself and his
family. It was enough turning down mayors’ committees, trusteeships,
school-board appointments, and pretty nearly every honor the town has
to offer. But when it comes to a big state job like this—’tain’t fair
to us!”
“Sorry you feel that way about it, Phil.”
“I do. Mother and Father are entitled to a little something out of this
game. I’m bringing up my little family to the best of my ability,
struggling along to make good American citizens out of them. Bek’s
got standing and children. Claire. Emma. Davey’s going to want the
background of good, sound family-connections. No one person’s got the
right to deprive an entire family of honor. No, by God, not even——”
“Phil!”
“_Gad_ was what I said, Mother. Wish you’d try to remember that, Ma.
No matter what I may happen to say—it’s ‘Gad’ I mean—no siree! Father
here comes to this country a poor boy. Not much more than an ordinary
farm-hand. Mother here a girl that had never been out of her Tyrol
village——”
“Kufstein, son.”
“Kufstein, mind you. Well, what do they do, these two? Practically not
a penny to their names. Strangers on a strange shore.”
“We were awful strange, son,” said Mathilda, and placed the tip of her
handkerchief to a reminiscent tear.
“Phil should set this lyric he is singing to ‘Hearts and Flowers’,
Mother,” said Henry, and slid one of his sly, wry winks to Henriette,
who laid an admonishing forefinger against her lips.
“I think it’s beautiful, Phil—I love to hear it over and over—the
coming to America of our Mother and Father. I just think it beautiful,”
said Emma, leaning over her darning-ball, her soft, blue eyes filled
with tears of melting dolly sweetness. “How was it, Mother, you and
Father stood hand in hand when you got off the old coach at Centralia,
all those years back? Tell it again. I love it. Father holding the
carpetbag and your two precious quilts wrapped up in a huge sheet, and
you clutching onto your great kerchief-bundle of clothing, with a pair
of Father’s brogans joined by string flung over your shoulder. What a
cute, adorable greenhorn you must have looked. I can just see you!”
“Your father was down to his last twenty dollars, son. At Ellis Island
they wouldn’t let us——”
“Yessir!” cried Phil, warming. “There’s a picture for you. Scared out
of their lives. Practically broke. What do they do? I’ll tell you what!
After managing to eke their way out here just because a fellow named
Hans Stengle from their same little village was living hereabouts, what
do they do? I’ll tell you what——”
“When Puppa and I arrived greenhorns, and first set foot in Centralia,
son, I can tell you, except for some few kronen inside my bodice and——”
“They come out here practically penniless and with their bare hands,
and their courage, and their grit, they build up the name Schuyler
to one of the most upstanding in the state. We’re not what you’d
call a moneyed family, but by Gad, we’re as upstanding as they come.
The name Schuyler has come to be in these parts synonymous with
salt-of-the-earth. Those two little peasants that got off the coach
here forty-odd years ago, have put their notch in what’s called the
backbone of this country. We’re the backbone. You’ve got it in you,
Henry, with your head on those shoulders of yours and your reputation
for being a sort of Cincinnatus at the plow hereabouts, to make this
here name Schuyler not only the salt of this here county, but salt
of the earth the country over. I know I haven’t always done all the
fine things I set out to accomplish, due to no fault of mine. I’m part
boob, but you’re a big man, only you haven’t got the sense to show
it. No siree, you haven’t got the right to deprive this family of
adding inches to its stature. Why, man alive, men with no more brains
to them than you’ve got have become President of these United States
of America. Men with no more brains than you’ve got are sitting on
Supreme Court benches while I’m saying these words. Fellows holding
big office and with twenty times your money, and running to you for
advice on the laws of the world, aren’t they?—No siree, you haven’t got
the right to deprive the Schuyler family of being as big as its biggest
man! No siree!”
Here was Phil, with the little roll of fat above the rear of his
collar, bulging and apoplectic with purpose, and his two fists
striking against the table again and again, making the apples in the
silver-cherub bowl rattle, and all eyes slowly swinging away from
the unwinding of the Old Gentleman’s perfect one-piece rind, to burn
solemnly upon the speaker.
“Phil’s right, there,” said Bek in her square, even tones. “Leastwise,
he’s right until we hear what you have to say in rebuttal.”
“Why, everybody knows Henry’s one of the smartest lawyers in the state.
He could be in big-league boots today if—if everything didn’t always
seem to seem funny to Henry, instead of worth wanting.”
Curious how even the occasionally pithy remark of Emma’s could go by
unheeded.
“Hennery—it would be a fine honor for me and Puppa——”
“You hear now, how your Mother feels! It isn’t often she asks what she
wants, in so many words. She just sits and eats out her heart.”
“Phil’s right, Henry.”
Here went Phil, soaring again: “Why, with your mind there’s no telling
how far you can go. You read a valedictory on this here town’s
high-school platform, when you were sixteen, ought to be printed and
put in every boy’s hand in this state today.”
“Beautiful,” said Emma. “I remember I cried. And to cry on a hot night
like that meant something.”
“You’re one of the biggest authorities on international law in this
country, only you go holler down a well about it.”
“For God’s sake, Phil—let up!”
“Hennery!”
“Sorry, Mother.”
“Why, men from as far east as Pittsburgh and Washington have found
their way to that little old dusty office of yours up over a
hardware-store. What do you think it does for the rest of us having a
man of authority in the family? Take the matter of a man’s credit. Why,
just take a man like me. The difference it would make to a man like me
in a town like Springfield. Family-standing. Brother of Henry Schuyler.
Yes, I’ll say it right out. Selfish, maybe, but I’m honest, that’s all.
I’m not afraid a fact will bite me if I say it out. Yessir, I believe
in calling a spade a spade, and a big one.”
“Not much sense to calling it a steam-shovel, Phil.”
“That’s all right, Bek. I’m showing my hand a little bit plainer than
the rest of you. Pull. Influence. Power. That’s what it will give the
family. Not asking anything of him except honor for himself, and,
what’s left of it, for us. Why, there’s no telling how far—gives me the
shivers, that’s how far a fellow like him can go——”
“Me, too ... right down my spine,” cried Emma, and did shudder a little
quite cozily, between her shoulder blades.
“Know something? Well, if you don’t, I’ll tell you. Man named Bill
Slade down in our town, newcomer from Indianapolis; nice fellow, quite
a promoter from what I understand, and bringing some good capital
behind him for a garbage-incinerator project he’s backing, well, that
fellow sat next to me at Business Men’s Club lunch other day. One
thing brought on another and finally, talking over the Republican state
ticket, this fellow says to me, he says, ‘You’re not by any chance
related to Henry Schuyler, down Centralia, are you?’ ‘No,’ says I,
‘excepting he happens to be my brother,’ I says to him, just like that.
Could have knocked that fellow over with a feather. ‘Well sir,’ he
says, ‘there’s a fellow, they tell me, could have the biggest political
plums in this state, if he’d a mind to. Why, I hear, if he wasn’t such
a queer duck for hiding behind a bushel-basket—why, sir, they tell me
that brother of yours, with his slant on things and his reputation
for having been the inside brains on everything from water-power to
franchise in the state for the last ten years, why, sir,’ Bill Slade
says to me, ‘why, sir, a fellow like that there brother of yours,
proper handling, can go far. Why, sir,’ Bill Slade says to me, he says,
‘What this state needs is more brainy men like him with hindsight, and
fore. A fellow indifferent enough to glory to be able to refuse to let
his party tweak his nose and lead him. Why, sir, a fellow like that,
proper handling, can go far!’”
“Go far!” said the Old Gentleman, on a sudden snort. “It does me a lot
of good if I enter a horse in a race that’s got it in his legs to win,
only he won’t leave the post.”
The family laugh broke out on that, and Morton Milliken, entering
in corduroys and hip-boots just in time to catch the drift, seated
himself beside Emma and placed the large sprawl of his hand against her
shoulder.
“What Henry needs is a little political catnip,” he said with the sort
of disinterested amiability characteristic of him.
“Yes,” said Henry. “It’s a great game, if you weaken ... enough.”
“Oh well,” said Phil and pushed back his chair with a toss of his
napkin toward the center of the table, which his mother caught up and
neatly folded, “I don’t see why I am the only one seems to be taking
this thing seriously——”
“No, no, son, we all——”
“What say you, Henriette?” cried Phil, suddenly finding her out with
his bulging eager eyes, where she sat quietly, a little out of the
group around the table, her chair pushed a discreet few inches to the
rear, as if to suggest that even though she was a privileged friend
of the family, after all, even so close a friend must know her place.
“Seems to me, if anybody is entitled to a say around here on this
subject, it ought to be you! What say you to Henry’s making little of
everything big that comes his way?”
There was Phil for you! Every time! The family drew in a simultaneous
breath of embarrassed dismay. Leave it to Phil to overstep. To go
too far. The same bungling tongue that doubtless kept matting up his
business affairs. The one wrong thing, here it came. The wrong thing
that Phil could usually be trusted not to leave unsaid. Sooner or later
he would not fail. The composite breath of the family was a pained and
embarrassed one.
All except Henriette and Henry. Strangely enough the long, rather
spinster-like face of Henriette was not unlike Henry’s in its
lantern-like contour. A face shaped somewhat like the sole of a foot,
and that even in its twenties had had no particular youth or age to
it. At this time Henriette’s face was practically what it would be at
forty-six, even to the coloring of the brightly brown bangs. Frizzed
ones, worn unfashionably above handsome brows. There was about her,
and remained even after she had ceased to teach, the odor of the
fifth-grade schoolroom.[13]
Chalk-dust seemed to hang on Henriette’s skin, making it pale and
brittle. And chalk seemed forever against her finger-tips, which made
her brush them together lightly of a dryness that had a tiny harsh
sound to it. She wore a shirtwaist dress of dark-blue silk, with
polka-dot collars and cuffs; and a round bag made of tiny steel beads
hung from her belt after the fashion of the day.
Except for the fact that she fumbled at this chatelaine, there was
nothing about Henriette to denote the flutter of heartbeat underneath
the blue silk at this spot light of a remark thrown suddenly upon what
might be regarded as her equivocal position of intimacy with the family.
“If Henriette Simpson and Henry Schuyler aren’t engaged, they ought to
be,” was about as far as local insinuation could possibly stretch to
the apparently impeccable friendship of these two.
To the wrongness of Phil’s question, Henriette revealed an illuminating
row of slim, beautifully white teeth.
“Seems to me, Phil,” she said, “that Henry is a pretty fair master of
his own soul.”
“Staunch words, friend-ally,” said Henry.
“Who am I to match my judgment against his?”
“That’s what lots of us would like to know,” growled Phil cryptically.
There was a long, stunned moment after that, nothing said, except that
over the back of Henry’s neck, so that he put up his hand as if to stem
it, there rolled a flush.
To David, lying flat on his stomach, heels waving, and his bright,
square gaze carefully averted from his mother’s fluttering one,
that rush of red across the back of his brother’s neck was like the
running-up of a flag. It was fascinating to have seen it happen. He
bored with his bright gaze against the spot, waiting to see what next.
When the red that did not belong there faded out, it was disappointing.
It just blinked out. Like a light.
“... No siree—neither Democrat or Republican——” Phil was saying to more
stamping of fist—“no siree—neither Democrat or Republican——”
“Nor,” said Bek.
“Henry,” said Dave in a shrill voice that he threw into the group, “to
be a Republicrun, does it mean to run the Republic?”
“Davey, go to bed!”
Henry had a peculiar kind of ingrowing laugh. Davey loved to watch it.
From the carpet-sofa, he could see it begin. Had he been silly? Well,
to be a Republicrun could mean to run the Republic. Henry’s was sure to
be a silent laugh, almost an imperceptible one, except for the heaving
of the shoulders. There was something furtive about Henry’s laughter.
There was something about laughter that seemed to make Henry ashamed.
He seldom, if ever, showed his teeth. Curiously, again, they were
strangely like Henriette’s in shape. Long. Only quite yellow and twice
the size of hers. A clean old-ivory yellow. When he laughed, he kept
his lips down carefully over them; and, as if from the effort, tears
sprang into his eyes and the color dyed his face in splotches. It was
altogether a sort of a contortion of a suppressed impulse. He laughed
now until the tears in his eyes took form and began to roll, and he had
to fumble for the rear trousers pocket of his nondescript gray suit
and fish out the great square of cotton handkerchief which his mother
ironed for him into the four large folds he liked.
It impressed the family to see Henry laugh. Because he laughed seldom.
There was nothing about Davey’s remark that had appealed to the
risibilities of any of them. It had only happened to strike Henry’s,
probably tapping him of nervous strain to let it rumble out in
laughter. Just the same, it was the signal for family-hilarity to mount.
“What’s the joke?” said the Old Gentleman, who himself loved to be the
one to arouse family-risibilities and then pretend to feel aggrieved.
“Here we sit! We’ve got a fine fifteen-hand trotting-horse, there’s the
finest pail of water in the state before him. He won’t drink!”
“You can lead a horse to water,” cried Emma, leaping brightly, “but you
cannot ...”
“Yes,” said Morton, and patted her hand.
“... but you cannot—make him drink,” she concluded, on a soprano
shriek, and not to be done out of her _bon mot_.
Henry cleared his throat, and with head lowered, set his piercing eyes
upon the Old Gentleman’s apple. The family knew precisely what the
Old Gentleman was going to do about that now nude apple. He was going
to plug it with his penknife as you would a watermelon, impale each
segment upon its tip, and pop them, one by one, into his mouth, for
short, audible mastications. The women hated the grinding sound he
made, the men scarcely noticed.
“You’re exactly right, Father,” said Henry, strumming his fingers,
and his eye unswerving upon the apple. “I’m not thirsty. You people
make the mistake of reckoning without your host. Naturally enough, I
suppose, under the circumstances. Except you, Bek. I should hardly
expect this of you, after the number of times we have been over this
sort of thing together.”
“This is different, Henry. This is big stakes. Not just local
chicken-feed.”
“It isn’t different. It is just another plan to project me into public
life.”
“Sooner or later, Henry, the world will find its way to your door.”
“If what you say is true, Bek, then it must do just that. I am not the
man to run out into the public marts to meet it.”
“Man alive, who’s sending you out into the public marts? You talk like
Julius Cæsar or one of those guys in a toga. The party for which you’ve
never turned a hand comes to your very door to seek you out.”
“‘Know thyself’ isn’t just a copy-book line, Phil, that you used
to write in Spencerian fifteen times after school. It’s about the
darnedest good advice was ever packed into two words. I’m onto myself
sufficiently to realize that my greatest service to my family, my
state, my country, does not lie in the public service of holding
office.”
“I’ll be dog-goned if it don’t look to me like your idea of your
‘greatest service’ is handing out free advice to everybody from a
poor-white squatter who has had his hog poisoned, to a state commission
which needs expert advice on a franchise situation. And a pin for your
pains! That may be service all right, but its damned idiotic service.
All that gives a diamond ring any value is the fact that there’s a
price-tag stuck on. Start giving them away, and see how long they keep
their value.”
“You’re right, Phil. But hang it, for the life of me I can’t seem as
interested in intrinsic values.”
“For the life of you,” said the Old Gentleman, “is the best reason a
man has got to be interested in values. In-trinsic—if it means what I
think it means, is what you try to forget when you’re trying to sell a
fellow a bronze medal.”
“Puppa!” bleated Mathilda.
“Pah!” said the Old Gentleman, dusting his hands free of apple. “Don’t
worry. I’m not joking, Mother. If Henry chooses to live and die a poor
nobody, that’s his own business.”
“It’s nothing of the sort, Father. It’s the family’s business, too.”
“Well, I’ve never asked any help of my children and I hope to God I’ll
never have to.”
“There’s not one of us would fail you, Father,” said pretty Emma.
“I know that. But all the same, I hope to God I never have to.”
“There are men in life, Father, who belong on the captain’s bridge, and
there are men who direct the course of a ship, and there are men who
build ships, and there are men who raise money to create ships. My job
is in the engine-room of a ship. As Phil says, these matters we are
discussing are not my own business alone. I have you to consider. But
I know myself, Father. I can serve you well from the lower decks of
this old boat we’re bobbing along in, but not if you force me out of my
greasy old overalls into brass buttons and try to proclaim me captain,
when I have the heart of an engineer. I want to serve as passionately
as you all want me to serve. But in my own way.”
“What way is that? Hollering down a well? Hiding behind a
bushel-basket? Back-door diplomacy?”
“Phil!” cried Henriette, as if she could endure no more—“You don’t
understand Henry—none of you—I mean—oh, I mean you can’t tamper with
the course of a river or the course of the sun—oh, I mean—what do I
mean?” and sat back with her knuckles pressed against her lips as if to
stem what further might come indiscreetly rushing to them.
“What Henriette means,” said Henry, stepping in calmly, as if to build
a wall of words between her and her flooding embarrassment, “is that my
way is the way of a man, Phil, who knows the limits of his strength and
the extent of his weaknesses.”
“A man, when the big men of his state and even from Washington look
him up in his little office in a small town, don’t talk about his
weaknesses.”
“But, Father, therein lies my strength. I am a spectator. I stand by. I
can develop wisdom only by attaining knowledge, and my kind of a brain
can achieve knowledge by contemplating from the side-lines. I’m like
that old fellow Cincinnatus, Father, in one respect anyhow. I think
best behind my plow. And my plow is that little old yellow desk up
over a hardware-store. It’s the nature of the beast. Surely you must
understand.”
“I understand that no one with the brains you’re supposed to have,
would turn down the opportunity to put some of those brains to turning
a wheel. I’m not saying the attorneyship in itself is the biggest plum
in the world. It’s what it can and will lead to. Power, man. That’s
what counts.”
“That’s Henry’s whole point, Phil, and as usual, you’ve gone
elaborately out of your way to miss it. He’s just finished saying that
his power, he believes, lies behind the machine of state.”
“That’s it exactly, Bek.”
“Pah, wouldn’t give a nickel for that behind-the-throne stuff.
I’d rather have been Marc Antony than Mark Hanna. Believe me, the
up-and-coming man of today is the up-and-going one. Get into big
business, or politics. Not only get your hand on the lever that
controls the machine, but _be_ the machine. Huh—if I had your chance——”
“If ifs and ands,” said Emma, and smiled at her brother—“were pots and
pans——”
“You want this town to furnish bond to secure factories and foundries,
don’t you, Henry?”
“Yes, Centralia’s water-power warrants it.”
“Good. You believe that the grade-crossing conditions in this town
are a menace to public safety and should be radically dealt with!
You believe that outside capital should be attracted into the state.
You believe, according to an article of yours in some law magazine
called _Civic Inventory_, that Elihu Perkins quoted at the Chamber
of Commerce, up home last week, that towns under half a million
population, Centralia for instance, should be run by about twelve
members of a board of estimate and apportionment. Well and good! You
believe, according to that article, that in making a budget, the civic
organization must be the hub, bringing all the civic interests together
like the spokes in a wheel. Mighty fine way you put it, ‘The spokes in
a wheel.’ Well, you try just blowing off steam about it in a magazine
article, and then being in a position to pull strings, that can set
some of those theories into practice, and see which gets you there
quickest.”
“I know, Phil. Every man who shares Blue Plate luncheons with you at
the Business Men’s Club agrees with that.”
“Bet your life they do, because they’re the go-getters without your
brains to go-get! Yessiree, you disbelieve in capital punishment,
don’t you? You say Prohibition is bound to come in this country, but
you favor a light-wine-and-beer plank, but only one that the people
themselves demand, don’t you? You’re watching that Hague show over
there, aren’t you? They come to you to get your opinion on the Johnston
extradition-matter, don’t they? You were the mainspring behind the
Centralia municipal-bond issue for sewerage-extensions and additional
fire-protection, weren’t you? You believe that the Taft administration
is in a position to do important things for the country, don’t you?
Well? Well? From up over your hardware-store, what wheel does it all
turn? No wheel! You spend your brain-money like water, and the other
fellow cashes in on it. Bah, that’s not even good Americanism!”
“Phil,” said Rebekka, regarding him with a slow, tired tolerance that
made her eyes crinkle, “you’re a fool. Perhaps it is Henry, of all of
us, who is truly American. Show me a man in this town, in this county,
in this state, with enough idealism in him to turn his face away from
the marts of men, if he had the ability and the opportunity Henry has.
Would you turn yours away?”
“No, by God. _Gad_, Mother. _Gad_, and I’m not ashamed to say so. Maybe
Father might. Hanged if I know. With all his shrewdness, I’ve seen him
do sky-larking things in business that you couldn’t account for. He’d
be a far richer man today except for those blind spots in his dealings,
like staying out of the Fulton Market project that time, for fear of
having a hand in damaging Milliken’s residential property along Third
Street when there was a garage already horning in. That’s what they
call in the classics, tilting at windmills. Guess you know all about
that deal, Morton?”
“I do seem to remember something about it.”
“I never knew, Pap, up to a year ago, from old man Grokin in
Springfield, that you went flat broke the year Bek was born, trying to
save some low-down crook of a cattle-dealer, who had double-crossed
you, from going to pen.”
“Why, Father, did you really?” cried Emma, her mouth falling open in
easy surprise.
“Sure he did. That’s fine. That’s great. But it was tilting at
windmills. Didn’t save the dirty little crook from dying in the pen, so
Grokin told me, did it?”
“But I didn’t put him there.”
“Why, take Fulton Market today, what you bet, Morton, that your old man
would think even better of Pap than he does, if Pap had jumped in and
cleaned up on that deal.”
“I’ve never discussed it with Father, Phil.”
“Maybe Henry is a chip off the old block, eh, Pap?”
“Henry is chip off the old block, but the block is not me. It’s
the block of his own hard-headedness. I don’t go into a deal that
will shove meat-market business property next door to my friend’s
residential holdings, and ease my conscience telling it there’s a
garage already there; but I don’t hesitate over the difference between
doing something and getting the honor for it myself, or doing it and
letting somebody else get the honor for it. If it was me in Henry’s
place, I would say to myself you’re a fool if you don’t take all the
honors they pile on you.”
“Now you’re shouting, Pap!”
“But if I was in Henry’s place, and felt like he does about it, then I
would tell the whole business of them to go straight to hell.”
“Puppa! Davey, go to bed!”
“You’re swell, Papa,” said Rebekka, winking broadly, brazenly and with
an open grimace toward Phil.
That seemed to startle the family plumage. Clara, sitting forward on
the edge of her chair, with her china-blue eyes dots of exclamation,
and Emma looking like a broody hen that had suddenly been startled off
her nest.
“All right, have it your own way, Pap, only I say again, Father ought
to be as rich a man today as there is in the county, instead of just
bobbing along, middling well-off and putting up what he can lay hands
on as collateral to help somebody else get by.”
“That’s the least, Phil.”
“Easy enough, Henry, for a bachelor to look at matters this way, and
regard money as only a secondary consideration. Guess if the truth is
known, that’s the answer to the mystery why you stay bachelor.”
There was Phil again with his turtle-shot gesture of head toward
Henriette! The family fingers curved inward, of instinct to throttle
him.
“Yes siree, easy enough for a bachelor, but there’s not a member of
this family with his head high enough above water financially to
see shore. We’re a funny crowd thataway. I’m not here to talk about
myself, but take me, for instance. You don’t need me to tell you, Pap,
that with capital in back of me, I’d be in a position to ride in on a
land-boom in my town that would put it on the map.”
“No, Phil, I don’t need you to tell me you need money.”
“There you go, always ready to dig the spurs into me. But look at
yourself, Father. Generally acknowledged to shrewdest cattleman in
the state, natural kind of smartness to you that can’t be learned in
schools—what have you got to show for your years and years of rising
at dawn, trapesing through snow and sleet and rain while other folks
are asleep—what’s it got you, compared to what you ought to have?”
“I’ve got this much. I don’t owe a penny that I can’t show
land-collateral for. I’ve got a name as clean as a whistle. I’ve got——”
“Of course you have, Father. That’s just the point. Here’s as
straight-dealing a family as there is. Father’s word as good as his
bond. Misses-out making himself a rich man in the Fulton Market deal,
out of purely ethical consideration for a friend....”
“That’ll be about enough of that, Phil,” drawled Morton; “nobody’s
contesting that point.”
“Sorry, Mort. No reflections on your old man.”
“It’s not considerate, Phil,” said Emma, and dotted the back of her
husband’s hand with little pats from the darning-ball. “Father’s
always been only too happy to go Grandfather Milliken’s collateral.
Grandfather Milliken would do as much for him.”
“Mort knows his old man stands all to the good with me. I’m just
pointing out that Father’s only well-off, when he ought to be rich.
Land-poor, when he ought to be pocket full. Nothing personal in what
I’m trying to say.”
“You are not so wrong there, son. Land sucks the money up.”
“Look at Bek. Best business man in this county.”
“I’m just one of the Schuyler boys,” said Bek, drily.
“That girl’s working the best farm within a hundred mile radius.
Runner-up to the Howey place itself. With capital, she could make the
Howey place look like a dime. Capital. That’s what she needs.”
“Capital is right, but I’ll compromise for the moment on those eight
Poland-China sows over at Pemberton’s I’m trying to make him take my
sixty-day note on.”
“Well, be as funny as you like, pigs is pigs. I know the power of
money. I know that if Morton here didn’t have his inheritance from
his grandmother tied up, he’d probably be building bridges instead of
laying out the sewerage of the back streets of this town.”
“We can’t complain, Phil. Morton’s doing well, and his father is paying
off the house for us.”
“Well, just the same, with the right kind of pull, he’d be in on the
big plums.”
“A fellow can’t crash through the politics of this town.”
“Exactly, Morton! What this family needs is the kind of political
influence that gave the Whittier family the position it holds. You
don’t think Ephraim Howey would ever be where he is if Zach Whittier
hadn’t happened to be his father-in-law, do you? You don’t think Ryan
Whittier cleared a cool million on that Light and Power deal, do
you, just because it fell into his lap? Every member of the Whittier
family owes where and what he is to Zach Whittier. He went out for
political power. He got political power. Long before Howey ever dreamed
he could do more than polish the handles of the big front door of
the gubernatorial mansion, Zach was throwing this and that municipal
and state plum in his son-in-law’s way, so that he couldn’t get past
without stumbling over them. That’s how the Whittiers became what they
are today in this state. Zach Whittier had talents, and he used them.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing, Phil,” said Henry, swinging his long,
lean lantern of a face toward his brother. “Using my talents, such as
they are, to their best advantage. God knows I wish it were in my power
to elevate the family fortunes. But it isn’t, Phil. I’m not the stuff
of which rich men are made. It doesn’t worry me, either, except when it
worries you.”
“I’m not saying it worries me....”
“You are, Phil,” cried Bek. “You’re saying it for all of us. Well, it
doesn’t worry me.”
“Nor me.”
“Me neither.”
“It doesn’t worry me neither, son, so much as the waste of the
smartness. Your mother and I have no kick coming. I’m better on my
feet today than any loafer I employ on the place. We’ve got a good
administration in Taft. I see good crops and good times ahead, if not
this year, maybe next. We’ve got our health. Our children, God forbid
we should ever need it, we have around us in case of need. All we are
asking now is honor. Honor is about to come to one of us. We want to
honor back the country that took in two immigrants, all those years
ago, by giving the best we got.”
“And that’s you!”
“We’ve got a little fellow growing up in this family Henry. It would be
fine if he should grow up in a family that has been honored....”
“Davey, go to bed! I knew he’d fall asleep there!”
Bek leaned forward. “Father’s hit the nail on the head there, Henry,”
she said softly, with her face carefully averted from the small,
sleeping form on the carpet couch. “Supposing he were to grow up into a
great successful family like the Whittiers or the Howeys, family that
has an Attorney General in it isn’t to be sneezed at.”
“Don’t worry about Dave, Bek. I’ll lay a red chip on him. There’s
quite a few little fellows have managed to grow up into a pretty fine
manhood, in spite of District Attorney in the family, too. Don’t worry
about Dave. Dave’s all right.”
Dave. Dave. Dave. The name kept flickering against his eyes, as he
lay half-asleep round and warm, on the sofa, while the carpet-nap
ground in against his cheek. He had been dreaming, ever so lightly,
in between the little pecking admonitions of his mother and his own
mouthings-back. His mouth ached a little from grimaces. The snatches of
dreams had a to-be-continued quality to them, like the newspaper comic
strips that he devoured from day to day. They were of Minute Men in
knee-breeches, and three-cornered hats trimmed with pen-wipers.
Rub-a-dub-dub. There was a line of them, with short, white stiffish
plaits of hair, like a sow’s tail when you hold it out of kink,
marching down an old street in one of the gray-looking pictures that
hung in Henry’s room. The Minute Men at Charlestown. The two foremost
rows of them carried drums and short fifes. Poised against the drums
were short sticks ready to r-r-r-rattle. Henry knew forty stories about
them. “I’ll lay a red chip on him.” Now why did Henry want to lay a red
chip on him? Tiddlywinks. There was an old set in the attic over at
Dora Tarkington’s.
The Minute Men in their three-cornered hats marching past an old
state-house with columns down the front like Renchler’s house—the
Minute Men at Lexington ... don’t worry about Dave—Dave—Dave. The name
kept flickering like a match before his consciousness. Who? Me? When he
forced open his eyes finally, stretching his small body so that it rose
in an arch off the sofa, there was the family of grown-ups, down among
whose knees he lived, regarding him.