Chapter Twenty-six

More and more frequently, now that Dave was seventeen, usually at supper-time in the small kitchen that Mathilda kept spotlessly clean and decorated in shelf paper of a scallop-design that she snipped out herself, the Old Gentleman came out flat-footed at him.

It held the little group of four around the table tense from the start of the meal. Mathilda, who kept breaking in with her futilities of pass-this-and-pass-that. Henry, whose gaunt, lantern face would darken and scowl, and Dave, whose toes would wind themselves around the rung of his chair.

In summer, the dusk crowded into the small stifling kitchen like a merciless hot smoke, and a clematis vine leaned in at the window and withered on its indoor side. In winter, the range was full of the small roar of flames chewing coal, but there was usually hoar-frost on the leaky windows.

Dave’s place at table faced the window. When the Old Gentleman began a fusillade, his tormented gaze would dig into the clematis vine or follow the wild and beautiful outlines of the frozen panes. The Old Gentleman, without any realization of it, could be relentless in his taunt. Could poke fun with a pitchfork.

“Well Mother, what do you think I heard over at Seven Mile, where I drove two heifers this afternoon? There’s a greater scarcity of farm-help today than there was during the war. Can’t get the men to stick to the land.”

“It’s a fact,” said Henry, obtuse for the moment. “Labor’s restive. Flattered by the attention it received during the war it is now watching the proletarian success in Russia. The Adamson Act fixed the basic eight-hour day, but failed to keep pace with the rising prices. Trouble with the back-to-the-land propaganda is this——”

“Well, as I told them over at Seven Mile today, I’ve got one hand on my place don’t have to be coaxed back to the land, because he’s never left it. Can’t seem any way to get him to leave it.”

“Puppa—some hominy,” fluttered Mathilda to the Old Gentleman, who was quivering with silent laughter.

That was the signal for Dave, who was about to quiz Henry about the Adamson Law, to wind agonized toes around the rung of his chair. It was the signal too, for Henry’s face to darken at his own gullibility and for him to rise to Dave’s defense.

“Say, Father, that’s pretty raw.”

“Pretty raw? Well, facts are stubborn things, as stubborn as some growing and grown boys that won’t get a move on for not knowing what they want.”

“Davey, little more sorghum on your hominy?”

“I’ll take my chance, Father, on the mind that decides slowly, over and above the one that is quick and ready on the impulse to which it doesn’t stick.”

“Quick and ready? It’s the second summer now, Taggart made promise to me he’d take him on at the bank. Sawdust-sprinkling has made many a road to the cashier’s cage for the honest, industrious boy. I’d like a Schuyler in a bank.”

“I don’t like banking, Father. In a cage—all day—thataway.”

“You worry about keeping spittoons clean first, young man.”

“Puppa!”

“By golly, what do you like? I am waiting to hear what you do like besides doing around here, on the place, chores that you could help me to hire a boy for, on wages you could make in a man-size job.”

“Puppa!”

“Now, Father, look here, be fair. It is true Dave’s old enough now to ——”

“I don’t need you, Henry, to dictate to me to be fair. I don’t see that you know how to be fair with yourself, much less instruct me how to be fair with my youngest. How fair have you been to yourself!”

“Puppa!”

“Hiding yourself under every bushel-basket you could find. Refusing honor after honor, like that fellow Cincinnati was named after. Only that fellow finally left his plow. I don’t want another Cincinnati fellow in the family.”

Anathema to the Old Gentleman were Henry’s shoulders heaving in the silent kind of laughter that he expressed in every fashion except the vocal. Red dyed his face. His body quivered. Up under the eaves of his brow, his eyes watered and drew themselves up tightly, like bird-claws, and tears oozed at the corners.

“I wish it could seem so funny to me!”

“I’m sorry, Father.”

“Henry, don’t aggravate your father.”

“He don’t aggravate me any more, Mother. That’s all past. I’ve long ago reconciled myself to the disappointment of seeing the son that could bring big honor, satisfied with being a country lawyer. It’s bitter to have to see it, but, by golly, I don’t sit back and see it happen over again! Dave, content to be just a hand on a one-horse farm!”

The bare toes clamped to the rung again. The Old Gentleman was right. Of course. A fellow didn’t stick around a farm no bigger than the Igrotte place, if he was worth his hire at doing anything better. The Old Gentleman was right. But the torturous indecisions! The torturous, torturous indecisions....

“You see, Father, a fellow like me in a bank-job—wouldn’t—make a go of it.”

“What about that job with Seth Pritchy on his dairy farm?”

“But, Father, the trouble with that....”

“The trouble with that,” suddenly shouted the old man, his irascibility rising and spluttering, “is you!”....

“I know, Father, but I don’t want——”

“Then what in Heaven’s name do you want? All right, Pritchy’s out. The bank’s out. Clerking’s out. Dairying’s out. Farming’s out. Now, young man, you tell me, by Gad, what you’ve got on your mind. That’s what I’ve got a right to know. Moon-herding at seventeen. Belly-reading. Star-gazing. Well—now what?”

“Father—when you yell that way—fellow gets confused.”

“Fellow gets confused,” mimicked the Old Gentleman. “Fellow gets confused. By golly, what do you think your old Pap is getting, sitting by and having to see a young fellow stagnate for want of the gumption to know what it is in life he’s cut out for. Day-dreaming. Night-gazing. Star-hunting. And the world going marching on! Fellow gets confused.... Like to know what you think I get!”

“Yes, Father, you get the boy confused, and you get me confused too. Pretty darned confused. The wonder to me is that the whole Schuyler outfit isn’t down in medical annals as Exhibit A of nervous dyspeptics, from a lifetime of meals eaten to your howling temperament.”

“Puppa—you haven’t touched your dish of rice. Pass your father the cinnamon, Davey.”

“I’m only asking him to tell me what he’s got on his mind that is better than anything we have to offer him! A father is entitled to that right. A bright boy, his age, can’t turn down everything that will help to get him off a shanty-farm without having something better on his mind than he lets on. What have you and him been cooking up together all these years, if it don’t give him enough gumption to come in out of the rain?”

“Give the boy time, Father, to find himself.”

“To find himself, Puppa. Henry, you sprinkle a bit of cinnamon on your father’s rice for him. He just won’t eat his rice plain. Puppa is the greatest one not to eat his rice plain.”

“To find himself! By his age, you were already in your second year law-school.”

“Yes, Father, but I had advantages that—we haven’t been quite able to give Dave.”

On that, it was as if you had jabbed a pin into the balloon of the Old Gentleman’s rambunctiousness. He lopped over along his spine. His chin fell to his chest, his hands sought the table-edge, and the red ran from his face, leaving it the blanched smoothness of an almond.

“Don’t hold it against me that he was born into the years of my reverses.”

“Puppa....”

“Nonsense, Father, you know precisely what I mean.”

“I know what I mean. He hasn’t even had a grammar-school education. A man like me, who has wanted for every one of his children what he could never have for himself, and who has been able to give it to every one except his last ——”

“If there is anything to be said on that subject, Father, I’m the one it might be said to. Not you. I’ve had out a lawyer’s shingle ever since Davey was born. I’ve been the one who should have managed to make his education and his advantages possible. You’ve the right to expect that from us—but, somehow, the blamed war—the general slump—the sum total of war, even for those who fatten off it, is loss. You lose if you win.”

“Henry’s been a good education to Davey,” quavered Mathilda. “All education don’t lie in the schoolhouse, Puppa.”

“If only you wouldn’t keep picking on me, Father,” piped up David. “I’m earning my keep, thisaway. I’m helping you, and I’ll help you more.”

“Earning your keep!” shouted the Old Gentleman again. “Earning your keep! Is that all you’re fit for? Like any hobo-hand who rides in on a box-car.”

“Dave’s of a peculiar and cautious temperament, Father. I’ve noticed that about him. Slow to act, but decisive, once his mind is made up. Give him time.”

“Time! Time! Time for what, that’s all I want to know. I’ve got a right to know. A man like me who banks on his children down to the last of them, making them citizens a community can be proud of! What’s in the back of this young one’s head? My other boys got out. Got themselves started—what’s in the back of this one’s head?”

“For Lord’s sake, Father, quit ragging the boy!”

“Don’t keep asking me that, Father!” cried Dave, goaded until he sprang to his feet with his face so drawn that before he even opened his mouth his mother was crying for him. “Don’t keep asking me that. Nothing’s in the back of my head. Nothing except—everything. I guess I’m not cut out for much, but if you’ll let me alone—if you’ll only let me alone. You let me alone,” shouted Dave suddenly, in the same key of his father’s raucousness, and then by an effort that pulled his mouth all out of shape and made his mother sob more with hurting for him, got his voice back again into a curious, hard level that slid up at the end into a ridiculous change-of-voice squeak. “Don’t hound me, Father! A fellow needs time....”

“He does that, Puppa. Davey was never a quick child. He’s not so strong as he looks, Puppa. He’s not looked so well lately.”

“Oh, Mother, for goodness’ sakes, Mother. I’m well.”

“A boy that’s too proud to wear his asafœtida-bag—can catch sickness.”

“Don’t hound him, Father,” said Henry, his brow heavy with scowl.

“Don’t, Father!” cried Dave, and, leaping up, suddenly ran toward the doorway, as if evading the pursuit of more words. “Don’t hound me. You see, with a fellow like me—with a fellow like me,” he kept saying through the tight dam of his tonsils, “I’ve just got to have time to—to—I’ve just got to have time. Don’t I, Henry? Don’t I, Hen-ry?” And then, to his unspeakable agony, began to cry. In sniffles. And wipe at his face with the grimy back of a hand.

There was something particularly feeble about the Old Gentleman, as he shuffled in the quick contrition that was sure to follow one of his outbursts, over toward his son, the pyrotechnics of his emotions dying down into broken and pitiable utterances.

“I’m a bad father, Dave. I can’t do anything for my children, and then I turn around and blame them.”

“Cripes,” said David, “what’s all the row about? I got to go for those two heifers.”

“Mind you close that south gate,” shouted the Old Gentleman after him. “Don’t you leave that south gate open, this time of night, again, or by golly, I’ll——”

“Puppa!” quavered Mathilda, standing in the open window with a stack of dishes in her hand. “Look! Isn’t that a rainbow out over Middleton way?”

It was. Three-quarters of an arch that stopped suddenly in the middle of the pasture, as if broken off.

“By Jove, it is, Mother!”

The delicate thing hung with the curve of a descending skyrocket over the evening countryside, sun-pierced rain-clouds breaking into great chunks and sending down spokes of light.

Into the light-sprayed arch ran the loping figure of Dave, headed for pasture.

“By golly,” said the Old Gentleman, blowing at his pipe and rousing the old, cold smell, “that’s fine! What’s it a sign of, Mother?”

“Run under a rainbow that comes up over your left shoulder, and you’ll get a pot of gold at its far end and never suffer a bunion all your days.”

“There goes Davey through! No bunions for him!”

“I’m glad. Bunions is mighty painful things,” said Mathilda, and limped on her own over to deposit dishes in the sink.[43]

FOOTNOTES: