Beaton was not embarrassed. He was in evening dress, and his face,
pointed with its brown beard, showed extremely handsome above the expanse
of his broad, white shirt-front. He gave back as nonchalant a nod as he
had got, and, without further greeting to Dryfoos, he said to Christine:
"No, no. You must keep your hand and arm so." He held them in position.
"There! Now strike with your right hand. See?"
"I don't believe I can ever learn," said the girl, with a fond upward
look at him.
"Oh yes, you can," said Beaton.
They both ignored Dryfoos in the little play of protests which followed,
and he said, half jocosely, half suspiciously, "And is the banjo the
fashion, now?" He remembered it as the emblem of low-down show business,
and associated it with end-men and blackened faces and grotesque
shirt-collars.
"It's all the rage," Mela shouted, in answer for all. "Everybody plays
it. Mr. Beaton borrowed this from a lady friend of his."
"Humph! Pity I got you a piano, then," said Dryfoos. "A banjo would have
been cheaper."
Beaton so far admitted him to the conversation as to seem reminded of the
piano by his mentioning it. He said to Mela, "Oh, won't you just strike
those chords?" and as Mela wheeled about and beat the keys he took the
banjo from Christine and sat down with it. "This way!" He strummed it,
and murmured the tune Dryfoos had heard him singing from the library,
while he kept his beautiful eyes floating on Christine's. "You try that,
now; it's very simple."
"Where is Mrs. Mandel?" Dryfoos demanded, trying to assert himself.
Neither of the girls seemed to have heard him at first in the chatter
they broke into over what Beaton proposed. Then Mela said, absently, "Oh,
she had to go out to see one of her friends that's sick," and she struck
the piano keys. "Come; try it, Chris!"
Dryfoos turned about unheeded and went back to the library. He would have
liked to put Beaton out of his house, and in his heart he burned against
him as a contumacious hand; he would have liked to discharge him from the
art department of 'Every Other Week' at once. But he was aware of not
having treated Beaton with much ceremony, and if the young man had
returned his behavior in kind, with an electrical response to his own
feeling, had he any right to complain? After all, there was no harm in
his teaching Christine the banjo.
His wife still sat looking into the fire. "I can't see," she said, "as
we've got a bit more comfort of our lives, Jacob, because we've got such
piles and piles of money. I wisht to gracious we was back on the farm
this minute. I wisht you had held out ag'inst the childern about sellin'
it; 'twould 'a' bin the best thing fur 'em, I say. I believe in my soul
they'll git spoiled here in New York. I kin see a change in 'em
a'ready--in the girls."
Dryfoos stretched himself on the lounge again. "I can't see as Coonrod is
much comfort, either. Why ain't he here with his sisters? What does all
that work of his on the East Side amount to? It seems as if he done it to
cross me, as much as anything." Dryfoos complained to his wife on the
basis of mere affectional habit, which in married life often survives the
sense of intellectual equality. He did not expect her to reason with him,
but there was help in her listening, and though she could only soothe his
fretfulness with soft answers which were often wide of the purpose, he
still went to her for solace. "Here, I've gone into this newspaper
business, or whatever it is, on his account, and he don't seem any more
satisfied than ever. I can see he hain't got his heart in it."
"The pore boy tries; I know he does, Jacob; and he wants to please you.
But he give up a good deal when he give up bein' a preacher; I s'pose we
ought to remember that."
"A preacher!" sneered Dryfoos. "I reckon bein' a preacher wouldn't
satisfy him now. He had the impudence to tell me this afternoon that he
would like to be a priest; and he threw it up to me that he never could
be because I'd kept him from studyin'."
"He don't mean a Catholic priest--not a Roman one, Jacob," the old woman
explained, wistfully. "He's told me all about it. They ain't the kind o'
Catholics we been used to; some sort of 'Piscopalians; and they do a heap
o' good amongst the poor folks over there. He says we ain't got any idea
how folks lives in them tenement houses, hundreds of 'em in one house,
and whole families in a room; and it burns in his heart to help 'em like
them Fathers, as he calls 'em, that gives their lives to it. He can't be
a Father, he says, because he can't git the eddication now; but he can be
a Brother; and I can't find a word to say ag'inst it, when it gits to
talkin', Jacob."
"I ain't saying anything against his priests, 'Liz'beth," said Dryfoos.
"They're all well enough in their way; they've given up their lives to
it, and it's a matter of business with them, like any other. But what I'm
talking about now is Coonrod. I don't object to his doin' all the charity
he wants to, and the Lord knows I've never been stingy with him about it.
He might have all the money he wants, to give round any way he pleases."
"That's what I told him once, but he says money ain't the thing--or not
the only thing you got to give to them poor folks. You got to give your
time and your knowledge and your love--I don't know what all you got to
give yourself, if you expect to help 'em. That's what Coonrod says."
"Well, I can tell him that charity begins at home," said Dryfoos, sitting
up in his impatience. "And he'd better give himself to us a little--to
his old father and mother. And his sisters. What's he doin' goin' off
there to his meetings, and I don't know what all, an' leavin' them here
alone?"
"Why, ain't Mr. Beaton with 'em?" asked the old woman. "I thought I
heared his voice."
"Mr. Beaton! Of course he is! And who's Mr. Beaton, anyway?"
"Why, ain't he one of the men in Coonrod's office? I thought I heared--"
"Yes, he is! But who is he? What's he doing round here? Is he makin' up
to Christine?"
"I reckon he is. From Mely's talk, she's about crazy over the fellow.
Don't you like him, Jacob?"
"I don't know him, or what he is. He hasn't got any manners. Who brought
him here? How'd he come to come, in the first place?"
"Mr. Fulkerson brung him, I believe," said the old woman, patiently.
"Fulkerson!" Dryfoos snorted. "Where's Mrs. Mandel, I should like to
know? He brought her, too. Does she go traipsin' off this way every
evening?"
"No, she seems to be here pretty regular most o' the time. I don't know
how we could ever git along without her, Jacob; she seems to know just
what to do, and the girls would be ten times as outbreakin' without her.
I hope you ain't thinkin' o' turnin' her off, Jacob?"
Dryfoos did not think it necessary to answer such a question. "It's all
Fulkerson, Fulkerson, Fulkerson. It seems to me that Fulkerson about runs
this family. He brought Mrs. Mandel, and he brought that Beaton, and he
brought that Boston fellow! I guess I give him a dose, though; and I'll
learn Fulkerson that he can't have everything his own way. I don't want
anybody to help me spend my money. I made it, and I can manage it. I
guess Mr. Fulkerson can bear a little watching now. He's been travelling
pretty free, and he's got the notion he's driving, maybe. I'm a-going to
look after that book a little myself."
"You'll kill yourself, Jacob," said his wife, "tryin' to do so many
things. And what is it all fur? I don't see as we're better off, any, for
all the money. It's just as much care as it used to be when we was all
there on the farm together. I wisht we could go back, Ja--"
"We can't go back!" shouted the old man, fiercely. "There's no farm any
more to go back to. The fields is full of gas-wells and oil-wells and
hell-holes generally; the house is tore down, and the barn's goin'--"
"The barn!" gasped the old woman. "Oh, my!"
"If I was to give all I'm worth this minute, we couldn't go back to the
farm, any more than them girls in there could go back and be little
children. I don't say we're any better off, for the money. I've got more
of it now than I ever had; and there's no end to the luck; it pours in.
But I feel like I was tied hand and foot. I don't know which way to move;
I don't know what's best to do about anything. The money don't seem to
buy anything but more and more care and trouble. We got a big house that
we ain't at home in; and we got a lot of hired girls round under our feet
that hinder and don't help. Our children don't mind us, and we got no
friends or neighbors. But it had to be. I couldn't help but sell the
farm, and we can't go back to it, for it ain't there. So don't you say
anything more about it, 'Liz'beth."
"Pore Jacob!" said his wife. "Well, I woon't, dear."