“I shall expect you back on the late-afternoon train today,” was his first communication, and he pranced around the house irately, scolded everybody that came near him, went down to his business and gave a good round of fault-finding there, and then returned to snarl at Irving because there had been no reply yet to his telegram.
He went himself to the late-afternoon train, but there was no repentant son arriving. He came home to write a lengthy letter, which he sent by airmail, special delivery, making plain to the boy what he was doing to his own fortunes.
I had arranged to put you in my own alma mater, where you would have the prestige that my son would carry. I had reserved the pick of rooms in the best dormitory, and because of the gifts of mine to the new fraternity building you were to be voted into the most exclusive fraternity without a question. Your path from the start would be smoothly paved, and your college course a success from every point of view.
I have looked forward to bringing you into my firm when your college course is ended, and putting you in the way of making a fortune! And now for the sake of a poor little runt of a man, who happens by unfortunate circumstance to be related to you, you are putting all this in jeopardy!
I had no idea before this that you had inherited your mother’s unfortunate temperament, holding grudges and being stubborn for your own way. I thought I had trained all that out of you. And now, can you not see what sorrow and humiliation you have brought upon me, your father, who surely am nearer to you than any grandfather, even if he weren’t such a dismal failure as a man?
You are too young to understand what a foolish thing you are doing, too young to have good judgment about character and to understand what a mistake I made when I married into a family who cared so little for appearances and were so narrow and fanatical that there was no peace in the family. And it is just because I made this mistake and was taken with a pretty face and winning ways, without looking ahead to see if she had the character to become a fit mistress for a man who was going to succeed in this world, that you had a mother who has given to you this vacillating character that moves you to yield weakly to each whining request from a foolish old man who will stoop to any lengths to win you away from your own father.
Now, my son, I have tried to make plain to you what you are doing to your life. If you do not immediately respond to my command, I shall have to withdraw all this that I have outlined to you. I shall have to cancel your entrance to one of the most renowned colleges in this part of the world, to withdraw my support from you entirely, and just allow you to grow up a country hoodlum, whom I shall be ashamed to call my son. You speak a great deal about what your mother would like, do you think she would like that for your future? Consider, my son, and be quick about it. For I mean what I say! Also, I demand that you come home to meet and welcome the woman I am to marry.
The letter would have been much longer and more bitter had not the clock suddenly announced to him that there was barely time to get it to the office before the mail closed.
Then he waited through a bitter night when his own ugly temper made a black background for his forthcoming marriage.
The truth of the business was he did not want his new lady to know of the trouble between himself and his son. He had told her very little about his child, and he did not wish to introduce a rebellious member of the family to her. He wanted his boy to come home and give her the courteous reception that his son should naturally yield to the woman who was to be his future stepmother.
When Revel received this letter he barely read it at all, for there had come a relapse in his grandfather’s illness, and he was lying at death’s door all that day. But later, when the doctor had brought a specialist and his grandfather had rallied again and seemed to take a feeble hold on life once more, the boy wrote a sorrowful brief little letter.
Dad:
I couldn’t answer sooner. This has been an anxious day. Grand has been very low. For a time the doctor felt he might leave us any minute. But we got a specialist from Boston, and now he has seemed to rally again, and I am very thankful.
Dad, I’m all kinds of sorry I have to seem so ungrateful to you, for the home you’ve given me, the standing in the financial world that was mine, the prestige you were arranging for me while acquiring a superior education. But not for all that, Dad, could I leave Grand now. And all I can say in answer to what you have said about him is, you do not know him really or you never would think all that about him.
About that request of yours that I come home and try to be courteous to the lady you are going to marry, I ask you to put it up to her. I am quite sure she would prefer not to have me there. At least not now. If you are marrying soon, it will not be thought strange that I am staying by my dying grandfather’s side. So I am asking you to put this up to her entirely.
And, Dad, one thing more. If you should carry out your threat of withdrawing your support from me, that’s all right by me. I’ll go on and work my way through, and I’ll promise you I’ll get a good education, too, so you won’t need to be ashamed of me.
So now, Dad, you and the lady talk it over, and I’m sure you’ll begin to see that I’m right in staying here. At least for the present.
Your son
He did not sign his name, because he would not sign Hiram, and he knew that Revel would only anger his father more, so he sent the letter unsigned.
The morning it reached his father, the lady herself arrived on the scene, to help in the solution of Revel’s problems.
Chapter 9
The lady was tall with a well-set-up figure and a handsome, rather overbearing face that well knew how to hide her unpleasant feelings on occasion. She was delicately made up and looked younger than she was. Mandy saw that at once. There was nothing soft and sweet about her to remind of the master’s former wife, although she had regular features and hair that was in the very pink of beauty-parlor order, giving her a smart, stylish finish that belied her height and bearing. She had very red, thick lips and a well-applied flush on her smooth cheeks. She wore a number of sparkling rings, reminiscent of her past marriage, and her nails were deeply tinted. Mandy fixed her eyes upon them at once as one fascinated. Hiram Radcliffe introduced her to the two servants at the dinner table, when they came in to serve the dinner, as Mrs. Temple of Rochester, New York.
And it was just as they were sitting down that Revel’s special delivery airmail letter was brought to his father.
Mandy saw the boss frown as he recognized the handwriting, and her heart quaked. That would be from the young master, of course, and what would he be saying now to bring such a black look to his father’s face? Her heart ached for the poor lad.
But the master had no opportunity to read the letter until the meal was concluded and they had withdrawn to the front piazza to enjoy the coolness of the evening after an unusually hot May day. Mandy made a hasty errand to the coat closet by the front door that had a little high window overlooking the piazza, and she presently returned to tell Irving about it.
“They’re settin’ there as big as life, holdin’ hands right out on the front porch!” she announced breathlessly.
“Well,” said Irving meditatively as he put away a large portion of the gala roast into his mouth, “it’s his porch. I guess he has a perfect right to do what he wants on it.”
“Yes, but her! The shameless huzzy! It ain’t her porch. Not yet, anyway!”
“Well, I guess there’s no one around looking at them!” said Irving with a shrug of his shoulders. This wasn’t the stage of the game yet for him to take sides.
“My dear,” cooed Mrs. Temple, “you’re looking troubled. Is there something that worries you?”
“Well—ur—yes! There is! It’s that boy of mine!”
“Oh, yes, the boy!” murmured the guest. “I’d forgotten about him. Is he here?”
“No, he isn’t, not just now!” said the father irately. “I told him distinctly to be here. I told him I wanted him to welcome you courteously. But no, he had
to rush off and be stubborn. Naturally, he’s rather upset at a new order of things.”
“Oh, is he? Well, I suppose he would be somewhat upset. But he’ll be going away to college very soon, won’t he? I thought that was what you said.”
“Well, yes, of course. He will. That was the plan. However it is only spring, and college doesn’t start until fall.”
“Yes, of course,” said the lady, a coolness in her tone. “And where is he now?”
“That’s the trouble. He’s gone off to his grandfather’s. The grandfather is a cagey old fellow, and he has staged an illness, with death in the offing, and worked on the lad’s feelings—he’s quite an emotional fellow—and begged him to come and hold his hand while he dies. So the lad went, and I’ve been very much mortified not to have him here to welcome you when you came. It doesn’t look right.”
“Oh, Hi,”—that was the lightly fantastic name she had invented in place of the old-fashioned Hiram, which she told him was all out of date—“Hi, I don’t think you ought to be so upset about that. It’s just as well for him not to be here this first time we are here together. You know it’s much more cozy without any outsider.”
“Yes, of course,” conceded the usually peppery Hiram. “But yet, on the other hand, he’s my son, you know, and it’s discourteous to you that he isn’t here.”
“Oh, well, I don’t mind, really,” she said with a smile. “It’s much pleasanter this way for now. You ought not to worry.”
“But I do worry. I’ve ordered him home at once, and he doesn’t come! Yesterday I wrote him my ultimatum. I told him to come at once or I would cut him off from his inheritance. I would not finance his college course, nor look after him financially anymore unless he obeyed me at once.”
A sudden glint of avarice came into the cold eyes of the lady. “Oh, Hi! Don’t you think that was rather severe?” she drawled. “And what does the boy say to that?”
“Well, I don’t know. He hasn’t said anything all day, and I rather looked for him on the six-thirty train, but he didn’t come, and now there has just come a letter from him, handed to me as we sat down to dinner. Perhaps I had better find out just what he does say. Will you excuse me if I read it?”
“Why, of course!” said the lady. “Just light me a cigarette, please, and then take as long as you want to.”
A few minutes later Mandy made another excursion to the coat closet and placed a wily eye behind the folds of the master’s raincoat where she had a full view of the scene. When she went back to Irving she gave a full account.
“Well, what d’ya think they’re doin’ now? Just settin’ there as neat as two clams, him reading his letter you guv him at the dinner table, an’ her holdin’ his han’, and both of ’em’s smokin’ cigarettes! Ef that don’t beat all! That settles it. Ef she’s goin’ ta be mistress here, I’m done! Yes, done, Irving!”
“Now Mandy, don’t you go saying what you won’t do and what you will. In fact, you haven’t been asked to stay yet, not by her! And she may not be so bad. Wait till circumstances develop.”
“All right fer you, Irving. You talkin’ like that. How would you like me to take to smokin’ cigarettes? That’s what it would likely come to, ef I have a mistress who smokes. You ken stay ef you likes, but I know my upbringin’ an’ I don’t serve no smokin’ lady.”
But on the piazza Hiram Radcliffe was having an argument, and for the first time in years he had met his equal. Oh, she didn’t storm, nor talk loudly, nor beat the air with gestures. She was very soft spoken but most persuasive. Her large eyes pleaded, her jeweled hands made passes at his big hand, and her voice was sweet and drawly.
“Why, Hi, what does your boy say that angers you so? Let me see his letter. Are you afraid to have me read it? I assure you, I won’t judge him harshly.”
“No, I’m not afraid to have you read the letter. There it is. Read it! Just a silly boy that doesn’t in the least know on which side his bread is buttered. But he’ll find out he can’t defy me. I think I’ll send the police after him in the morning. He’ll find out that he hasn’t the right to say where he’s going to stay and what else he is going to do.”
The lady was silent while she read Revel’s pitiful plea. A close observer might have seen that sinister gleam in her eye again, but as she finished the letter she handed it indifferently over to Hiram Radcliffe and said in a casual, lazy tone: “Do you know, Hi, I think you’re making entirely too much of this matter. He’s only a youngster, you know, and hasn’t found himself yet. Why not let him stay there awhile and find out for himself that things are not what they seem to him. If the Revels are what you say, he’ll find out. He can’t help it. And you know it will be a great deal better for the young man to find out he has made a mistake, than to be ordered home and come because he has to. He’ll always be sore at you for it, and never discover he was wrong. If I were you, I’d tell him to go ahead. Tell him you’ve changed your mind and he can stay as long as he sees fit. Let him put himself through college if he thinks he’s so smart. Then it won’t be long before he’ll come crawling to you to help him out, and then you’ll have him just where you want him, and you can make your own terms.”
“Own terms!” exclaimed the man. “I shall make my own terms, of course! And I won’t wait for him to crawl; he’ll come because I say so.”
“Oh, no, Hi! That’s not good psychology. That’s merely spoken by a man who wants to flatter his own ego, who is determined to impose his will upon a mere child! Wait until he has had even one year of college at least before you attempt to force him into anything. He isn’t a babe in arms. He is old enough to choose what he thinks best, and find out for himself. If he doesn’t trust you enough after the years in which you have brought him up to let you decide his order of life, you certainly cannot force him to trust you. He must find out for himself that you were right.”
“Natalie, my dear, you do not understand. I am trying to plan for our almost immediate marriage, and what would my friends, my neighbors, my business associates think, if my son were not present at his father’s wedding?”
“Oh, that’s silly!” laughed the lady. “Your son has himself provided the excuse. What is more wonderful, more self-sacrificing than that a son of a former marriage should quietly give up the privilege of watching his adored father married, in order that he may stay by the dying bed of his dead mother’s father? I think myself it is a very noble reason, and very charming in a young fellow to be so faithful to his mother’s kin, even though that kin may not be worthy of so much devotion. Come, now, Hi, your son has put it up to me to decide this question, and I am very willing to be the arbiter of this matter. I think your son is right! He should stay where he is, at least for a while. His reasoning is good. And most of all is his suggestion that you ask me what I would like. He must have keen perception to realize, young as he is, that you and I can have a far happier time during the first of our marriage months, if we are by ourselves and not hampered by the presence of a son who is not my son. Can’t you see that, Hi dear? If you really care for me in the way you have told me, will you not be persuaded to let the boy alone, and keep us apart, at least until such time as he shall desire to be with us, which may or may not come in the future?”
The man drew his heavy, determined brows down fiercely and looked at her.
“But surely, Natalie, you do not object to the presence of my son?”
“Yes, I do,” she said firmly, in a very low, clear voice. “I do very decidedly object to his presence in our home. He represents a portion of your life in which I could not possibly have a part, and he reminds me of a time when I had no part in your life. It could not be a pleasant thing for me to come into a household thus divided. I certainly do object.”
“This certainly is a strange time to bring up a matter like this, Natalie! Just two weeks before the date we have set for our marriage. Do you realize that you have never said anything of this sort before?”
“Do you realize, Hi, that you have
never mentioned your son to me but once, and then very casually? You spoke then very casually. You spoke then very finally of his going at once to college, and probably being there four years. I supposed, of course, he had other young interests and would not be a factor in our lives at all.”
Her voice was low and very sweet. Her fingers were smooth and most vital as they curled about his hand and occasionally moved softly up and down his wrist.
Mandy, from her point of vantage, watched at intervals and returned to the kitchen to tell Irving.
“She knows her onions all right! She’ll make it! An’ he won’t get wise, neither, not’ll she get him good and tight! Me, I’m goin’ out and find me ’nother place, just as soon as ever she leaves ta get ready for her weddin’, and I hope that’ll be soon.”
“Now, you Mandy, you hold your horses! You can’t tell what won’t happen yet.”
“Keep yer own shirt on, Irving. I know one thing ain’t goin’ ta happen, an’ that is the Boss ain’t a-gonta get wise ta her till it’s too late.”
But the lady left that night, after all, on the midnight train.
“And I didn’t needta get that gues’ room cleaned after all!” sulked Mandy, watching the taillights of the master’s car disappear down the drive as he drove his lady to the midnight train.
The lady had conquered. She had made it plain that she wanted to be alone with her bridegroom those first few months, and she had done it so winsomely that the man was actually pleased over the idea. It wouldn’t, of course, make much difference in his plans for his son. Let the boy remain with his grandfather until college opened. He could arrange for his entrance all right, he was sure. A little money, a hint of more, and the authorities would fix things up for his son. He had always been generous in his gifts to his alma mater. It looked well, and all such things “told in the end,” he told himself.
The Girl of the Woods Page 9