Part 12 (2/2)

”No, it's all right,” Ben said, declining though to be amused. ”I've got a gentleman's agreement with Sarah. Every other Sunday. Father's well enough satisfied now if he gets one of us. When they're all gone, I can slip out and buy a Sunday paper--jazz up the piano--have a regular orgy.

Every other Sunday! Gee, but it's fierce!”

”It's pathetic,” March said. ”Poor father! I don't suppose there's any help for it.”

What struck him was the pitiful futility of his father's persistence in trying to impose his ways, his beliefs, his will, upon one so rapidly growing into full independence. The only sanction he had was a tradition daily becoming more fragile. He was in for the bitterness of another disappointment. That was what there was no help for.

Naturally young Ben didn't interpret it this way. ”You're a nice one to talk like that,” he said resentfully. ”You've always done whatever you pleased.”

”There's nothing to prevent you from doing the same thing if you look at it that way,” Anthony observed. ”You've got a job a man could live on, haven't you?”

”Live on? Fifteen dollars a week?”

And it may be admitted that Ben's sense of outrage had some foundation.

Years ago he had made up his small young mind that he would never work in the factory and he settled the question by getting himself a job in one of the piano salesrooms on Wabash Avenue. He wasn't precisely a salesman yet, he might perhaps have been spoken of by an unkind person as an office boy. But it was essential that he look like a salesman and act like a salesman, even in the matter of going to lunch. Some day soon, he was going to succeed in completing a sale before some one else came around and took it out of his hands, and he could then strike for a regular commission.

In the meantime with shoes and socks and s.h.i.+rts and neckties costing what they did, the suggestion that his salary was adequate to provide a bachelor's independence was fantastic and infuriating.

”Yes,” he grumbled, ”if I wanted to live in a rat hole and look like a tramp.”

”My rat hole isn't so bad to live in,” Anthony said, ”but I'd be sorry to think I looked like a tramp. Do I, for a fact? I haven't had this suit on since I went into the army but I thought it looked all right.”

”Oh, there's a big rip in the back of the shoulder where the padding is sticking through and your cuffs are frayed and your necktie's got a hole worn plumb through it where the wing of your collar rubs. You don't look like a tramp, of course, because you look clean and decent. It would be all right if you had to be like that. Only it's all so darned unnecessary. You could make good money if you'd only live like a regular person. Every day or two, somebody telephones to know if you aren't home and if there isn't some way we can get word to you, and it's kind of humiliating to have to say there isn't;--that we don't know where you are, haven't seen you for a week,--things like that. Of course, it's none of my business, but _I'm_ trying to pull out of this. I'd like to _be_ somebody someday and it would be a darn sight easier if you were trying to pull the same way instead of queering us all the time.”

”Yes, I know,” Anthony said thoughtfully. ”But then there's Sarah on the other hand who can't forgive me for not putting on a red necktie and going Bolshevik. She'd have me put in my time trying to upset the bourgeois applecart altogether.”

Ben grinned. ”You ought to have heard her go on about the limousine that came and left a note for you the other day. Lady inside, chauffeur in a big fur coat. He came up to the door and asked whether you were home and left the note when Sarah said you weren't. Last Thursday, I think that was, just before supper. It's over there on the mantel, I guess. Sarah's afraid you're going to turn into a little brother of the rich.”

”You tell Sarah,” Anthony said off the top of his mind, the rest of it obviously engaged with the note,--”you tell Sarah there's nothing capitalistic about this. This is from her Doctor Wollaston's wife.

Certainly he earns his living if anybody does.”

”Do they want their piano tuned again?” Ben asked.

”They don't mention it. They want to know if I'll come to lunch to-day.

I'm going to telephone to see if the invitation has expired.”

”Good lord!” said Ben, ”what have you got to wear? You can't go looking like that!” He meant to go into particulars when his brother came back from the telephone. But by that time he had something of nearer concern to himself to think about. Anthony found him staring out the window with an expression of the liveliest dismay.

”Oh, look who's here!” he said. ”Can you beat it?”

Anthony looked and saw a little Ford coupe pulling up to the curb in front of the house; looked more closely at the person at the wheel and blinked.

”Jennie MacArthur! I thought she was still in New York. But what's she doing in that car?”

”Oh, she bought it last fall,” Ben said. ”She's getting rich. But can't you see what it means? She's coming around to see Sarah and that'll give Sarah an excuse for staying home from church. And that means that _I'll_ have to go.”

”Don't worry about that,” Anthony said, catching up his hat. ”I'll head her off. Tell mother I'll be around to-night.”

He intercepted Jennie at the car door, caught both her hands and pressed them tight, pushed her back into her seat as he did so, climbed in and sat down beside her. ”I'm supposed to be saving Ben from the horrible fate of getting dragged to church when it's really Sarah's Sunday,” he said. ”If you'll just drive me around the corner, I'll explain.”

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