_Mrs. Eugenia Parker, President of the Federated Women’s Clubs,
bitterly shares Black Orlo’s opinion that her son does not amount to
much, in which Peter himself cordially concurs._
GLEN DARROW’S bitter wish could hardly have been granted with propriety
at that very instant, for the reason that young Mr. Peter Parker of
Pasadena was in bed.
It was barely eight o’clock, which meant that he was just settling down
into the final, delicious doze of the morning which he always allowed
himself after an exceptionally full night. Takasugi, his valet, had not
even opened the door a cautious crack to reconnoiter.
But if eight A.M. meant only a deeper dive into the depths of slumber
for her son, it meant very nearly the middle of the forenoon to Mrs.
Eugenia Parker, President of the Federated Women’s Clubs of the United
States, eating her well-balanced breakfast from a tray in her study,
three floors below. She was awake at five every morning, and arose
after a few moments of marshaling her thoughts for the day, did a
brisk Daily Dozen to the exhortations of a small, compact, traveling
phonograph, got briskly in and out of a stone-cold tub, walked for ten
vigorous minutes up and down the graveled driveway, and sat down to her
desk.
At eight o’clock her breakfast was brought to her--fruit, dry toast,
one slightly boiled egg, black coffee. At nine her secretary arrived
and they were closeted until one o’clock, when the president paused for
luncheon, either at home or abroad, as the case might be--likewise an
austere meal. Afternoons and evenings were given over to official and
semi-official duties, and midnight frequently saw her back at her desk
for a hasty glance at the late mail, her thick iron-gray hair braided
into an uncompromising pigtail, her thick figure relaxing thankfully in
the freedom of a perfectly plain kimono of dark gray silk. Mrs. Parker
was straightly and inexorably corseted by day and sat always rigidly
erect in severe straight chairs, but in the late and intimate hours
she leaned back and sighed luxuriously now and then. Nature’s idea had
been to make her a soft, fat old lady, but Mrs. Eugenia Parker knew
that it was not necessary to humor Nature in these little matters,
and she was clearing sixty with a satisfying hardness and firmness of
flesh. She was a plain woman and well aware of it, and went in for
dignity rather than adornment, and there was force and character in
her face, as well as much tolerant and unsentimental kindliness. When
she presided at conventions the country women noted with surprise and
a certain pleasure that her hair was not marcelled, nor were her short
and serviceable nails conspicuously manicured, and on her salient chin
there was a faint but determined little beard. Mrs. Parker did not
consider that decorative, and sincerely meant to have it attended to,
as soon as she could conscientiously take the time.
On that particular morning she read the solid and conservative
editorial in her favorite daily with cordial approval, and turned to
the little heap of newspapers which had come in by yesterday’s late
mail and were still in their wrappers. People were always sending her
marked copies ... a glance here, a marginal note for her secretary
there.... There was a very slim one which was addressed to her son and
had been put with her mail by mistake. She wondered, grimly, who could
be sending Peter a marked copy ... who could believe that he would be
interested.... She was just putting it aside when she noticed that it
bore the postmark of the old southern city where her husband--and now
her son--owned a half interest in a cotton mill, and after an instant’s
hesitation (but there was certainly nothing private in a newspaper!)
she tore it open and--dividing her attention with her breakfast--began
to read.
Twenty minutes later she entered Peter’s suite with the sharpest of
announcing raps and stood looking through the clever and attractive
room to the sleeping porch beyond where a motionless figure lay at ease
in a brilliant blue bed.
“Peter!” she said sharply, but the silent form did not even quiver,
and she marched upon him with her short, decisive steps and stood
looking down at him. It was almost a year since her only son who was
likewise her only child had reached the age of twenty-one, and had
legally, at least, become a man, but sleeping there in his bright blue
pajamas which perfectly matched the enamel of the bed and its very
decorative spread, his fair head pillowed on one up-flung arm, he gave
decidedly more the effect of fourteen. “And I believe he _is_ fourteen,
essentially,” his mother reflected unhappily. She was in the habit
of talking learnedly about juvenile delinquents who were, perhaps,
chronologically sixteen, biologically twenty, and psychologically only
eight, but it was not until this hour of shame and chagrin that she was
willing to include her own offspring in that stern classification.
Peter had been a delightful baby, a charming child, and a most
disappointing youth. He was--or he was considered to be--more
delightful and more charming than ever, but his parent found him
purposeless and utterly devoid of direction. Frankly, she wondered
what people saw in him, and whatever it was, she sincerely wished they
did not see it, and flatter and fool him and flock about him, to his
further demoralization. She was rather sure that he had brains--it
was hard, indeed, to see how he could escape them, but he concealed
them like a deformity, and if he had convictions on any subject he was
singularly adept at cloaking them in persiflage. Sometimes Mrs. Eugenia
Parker went so far in her own mind as to wish that he had been old
enough to be in the war; it seemed to her that drill and discipline,
that hardship and horror, blood and agony, might have developed him,
might, in the rubber-stamp phrase, have made a man of him: golf and
tennis and polo and mountain climbing and mah jongg had not done so, up
to date.
He continued to sleep, a faint smile on his wide mouth which turned up
a little at the corners, even in repose, like a clown’s painted lips,
beneath the pressure of her scorn and displeasure, and presently a sort
of resentment rose in the earnest lady, and she laid hands upon him and
shook him.
“Peter! Peter! Wake _up_!”
Peter woke up obediently, but by easy stages, and it was several
moments before his mother could feel that she had really focused his
attention upon the little paper she held in her hand.
He made a valiant effort to keep his eyes open. “Oh, I see.... Yes,
certainly I understand, Eugenia....” He yawned enormously and smiled in
deprecation. “Sorry! I get you perfectly. Some Red doesn’t care for my
mill, isn’t that it?”
“Peter, that’s only part of it, only the beginning! Read it! Read it,
and see if you can endure to have such things said of you!”
“Are they libels, Eugenia?”
The Federation President flushed suddenly and furiously. “No, Peter,
no; that’s the most dreadful part of it. What this man says, in its
essence, is _true_!”
“Well, then,” said her son, reasonably, “we can’t do anything about it,
can we, Eugenia?” His mother sat down heavily in a chair beside the
bed, and he regarded her warily. “Now, suppose I have my shower, and my
coffee, and then we--besides, isn’t Miss Dexter waiting for you?”
“Miss Dexter can wait,” said the lady levelly. “I want you to read this
article about you, Peter.”
“But what,” he wanted genially to know, “is the big idea? The gentleman
thinks and says, probably with much force and emphasis, that I’m no
good? Well, that’s not a news item, Eugenia. You know it for a fact,
and I’ve long suspected it, so why muss up our minds with it this
bright morning?--this pearly dawn!” he added meaningly, pulling his
watch from under his pillow. “I hate being harrowed so _early_.... I
think my resistance is low at this hour. Don’t you think that may be
it?”
“My son,” she insisted, “cannot you see that I am serious?”
He sighed. “Certainly I can see that you are serious, Eugenia. I have
seen nothing else since I have been old enough to make an intelligent
estimate of your character, and it has, I might mention in passing,
darkened my young life.... However ... to return to the matter in hand,
unless this sob stuff is violent enough to be funny, there are lots of
things I’d rather read!”
“Peter, I have been very unhappy about this mill for years. I urged
your father not to invest in it. I knew--I suspected, at least, from
its location--that the labor conditions would be deplorable, and of
late years I have been convinced of it. Nevertheless--and I blame
myself severely for it----”
“Oh, now, don’t be severe with yourself, Eugenia,” he pleaded
engagingly. “There’s always me to revile, you know!”
“I have been so engulfed in other affairs, in fighting for things in
_general_, that the _particular_, in this instance, has escaped me. And
now this article, which, in spite of its almost hysterical attack upon
you, personally, has a very authentic ring, proves that the Altonia is
one of the bad mills.”
“I could have told you it was one of the bad mills, Eugenia. Darn’
dump’s passed its dividends twice, I understand from Judson.”
His mother stared. She hadn’t supposed, really, that this fritterling
knew what a dividend was, but she returned instantly to her text. “I
didn’t mean bad in that sense, of course, as you know quite well. I
mean that it flagrantly disregards the laws with reference to employing
children under a certain age, and working children of any age at night.
If you will _read_ it, Peter----”
“Now I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Eugenia. You leave it right
here--right here beside me on the bed, see?--so I can’t possibly lose
it, and after I’ve had my shower and my coffee, and while Takasugi’s
shaving me----”
Mrs. Eugenia Parker got to her feet and walked to the end of the
sleeping porch and stood for several moments looking out into the
effective garden which surrounded her house. When she came back to her
son her voice was low and steady.
“Will you try to realize what this means to me, personally, Peter?
In the first place, because you are my son, and in the second place
because, publicly, I stand for proper working and living conditions,
compulsory education--law enforcement--and privately, I or at least
a member of my family--Peter, we are the accessories after the fact!
We are guilty, you and I, of breaking laws, not only the laws of the
country, but the laws of common humanity. Peter, are you listening to
me? You are not going to _sleep_ again?”
“Not if I can possibly help it, Eugenia,” he assured her warmly, “but
there’s something so soothing about your voice....”
She rose again and stood frowning down on him. “Peter, I ask you once
more, will--you--read--this article?”
“I’ll compromise with you, Eugenia! You read it, and I’ll listen!” He
propped himself up on an elbow. “It’s a long time since you’ve read
aloud to me, isn’t it, Eugenia? Remember how I used to want the ‘Swiss
Family Robinson’ twice a year? And ‘Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawas,’ and
‘Thro’ Swamp and Glade,’ and ‘The Prince and the Pauper’? You wouldn’t
read Frank Merriwell to me--‘_Blooey, blooey, and eight more redskins
bit the dust!_’--and I always rather held it against you,” he smiled at
her cozily. “Now, you go right ahead and get this off your mind, Madame
President! Shoot!”
Mrs. Parker sat down again, stiffly, on the edge of her chair. “Peter,
will you never grow up?”
“Certainly. I did. I am. There are those who consider me entirely
mature. For example, the very determined young lady from Arizona who
endeavored to espouse me at Del Monte last month, and the----”
“Peter, _please_!” The consuming terror of her life was that her only
son would make a thoroughly unsuitable marriage and he was quite well
aware of her anxiety on the subject.
“Well, what do you suppose it _is_, Eugenia? _What_ is the secret of my
fatal attraction? If I didn’t take Takasugi with me, there are times
when I should be actually overpowered.... You wouldn’t say, would you,”
he flung back the bright blue spread and sat up in his bright blue
pajamas, his fair hair mussed, his arms about his knees, “that I am
the caveman type, popularly supposed to be irresistible? It must be my
girlish laughter. But to return--I have no objection, I never had, to
growing up, a process which carries with it many pleasant prerogatives.
But I will not--I will never, and it is useless for you to plead with
me and importune me, Eugenia, grow old. Madame President, consider
the bleakness of it!” He shivered and dove under his covers again.
“Eugenia, I tell you frankly, I’m in a Peter Panic about growing old!”