The Second Generation. David Graham Phillips
years after we were married, and I'd have been doing it yet if your father hadn't just gone out and got a girl and brought her in and set her to work. No; sit down, Del. You don't know anything about work. I didn't bring you up to be a household drudge."
But Del was on her way to the kitchen, whence she presently reappeared with a platter and a vegetable dish. Down the front of her skirt was a streak of grease. "There!" exclaimed Mrs. Ranger, coloring high with exasperation, "your dress is spoiled! I don't believe I can take it out of that kind of goods without leaving a spot. Hiram, I do wish you wouldn't meddle with the children! It seems to me you've got enough to do to 'tend your own affairs at the mill."
This was unanswerable, or so it seemed to her husband. Once more he felt in the wrong, when he knew that, somehow, he was in the right.
But Adelaide was laughing and going forward gracefully with her duties as waitress. "It's nothing," she said; "the stain will come out; and, if it doesn't, there's no harm done. The dress is an old thing. I've worn it until everybody's sick of the sight of it."
Mrs. Ranger now took her turn at looking disapproval. She exclaimed: "Why, the dress is as good as new; much too good to travel in. You ought to have worn a linen duster over it on the train."
At this even Hiram showed keen amusement, and Mrs. Ranger herself joined in the laugh. "Well, it was a good, sensible fashion, anyhow," said she.
Instead of hurrying through dinner to get back to his work with the one o'clock whistle, Hiram Ranger lingered on, much to the astonishment of his family. When the faint sound of the whistles of the distant factories was borne to them through the open windows, Mrs. Ranger cried, "You'll be late, father."
"I'm in no hurry to-day," said Ranger, rousing from the seeming abstraction in which he passed most of his time with his assembled family. After dinner he seated himself on the front porch. Adelaide came up behind and put her arm round his neck. "You're not feeling well, daddy?"
"Not extra," he answered. "But it's nothing to bother about. I thought I'd rest a few minutes." He patted her in shy expression of gratitude for her little attention. It is not strange that Del overvalued the merit of these trivial attentions of hers when they were valued thus high by her father, who longed for proofs of affection and, because of his shyness and silence, got few.
"Hey, Del! Hurry up! Get into your hat and dust-coat!" was now heard, in
Arthur's voice, from the drive to the left of the lawns.
Hiram's glance shifted to the direction of the sound. Arthur was perched high in a dogcart to which were attached two horses, one before the other. Adelaide did not like to leave her father with that expression on his face, but after a brief hesitation she went into the house. Hiram advanced slowly across the lawn toward the tandem. When he had inspected it in detail, at close range, he said: "Where'd you get it, young gentleman?" Again there was stress on the "gentleman."
"Oh, I've had it at Harvard several months," he replied carelessly. "I shipped it on. I sold the horses—got a smashing good price for 'em. Yours ain't used to tandem, but I guess I can manage 'em."
"That style of hitching's new to these parts," continued Hiram.
Arthur felt the queerness of his father's tone. "Two, side by side, or two, one in front of the other—where's the difference?"
True, reflected Hiram. He was wrong again—yet again unconvinced. Certainly the handsome son, so smartly gotten up, seated in this smart trap, did look attractive—but somehow not as he would have had his son look. Adelaide came; he helped her to the lower seat. As he watched them dash away, as fine-looking a pair of young people as ever gladdened a father's eye, this father's heart lifted with pride—but sank again. Everything seemed all right; why, then, did everything feel all wrong?
"I'm not well to-day," he muttered. He returned to the porch, walking heavily. In body and in mind he felt listless. There seemed to be something or some one inside him—a newcomer—aloof from all that he had regarded as himself—aloof from his family, from his work, from his own personality—an outsider, studying the whole perplexedly and gloomily.
As he was leaving the gate a truck entered the drive. It was loaded with trunks—his son's and his daughter's baggage on the way from the station. Hiram paused and counted the boxes—five huge trunks—Adelaide's beyond doubt; four smaller ones, six of steamer size and thereabouts—profuse and elegant Arthur's profuse and elegant array of canvas and leather. This mass of superfluity seemed to add itself to his burden. He recalled what his wife had once said when he hesitated over some new extravagance of the children's: "What'd we toil and save for, unless to give them a better time than we had? What's the use of our having money if they can't enjoy it?" A "better time," "enjoy"—they sounded all right, but were they really all right? Was this really a "better time"?—really enjoyment? Were his and his wife's life all wrong, except as they had contributed to this new life of thoughtless spending and useless activity and vanity and splurge?
Instead of going toward the factories, he turned east and presently out of Jefferson Street into Elm. He paused at a two-story brick house painted brown, with a small but brilliant and tasteful garden in front and down either side. To the right of the door was an unobtrusive black-and-gold sign bearing the words "Ferdinand Schulze, M.D." He rang, was admitted by a pretty, plump, Saxon-blond young woman—the doctor's younger daughter and housekeeper. She looked freshly clean and wholesome—and so useful! Hiram's eyes rested upon her approvingly; and often afterwards his thoughts returned to her, lingering upon her and his own daughter in that sort of vague comparisons which we would not entertain were we aware of them.
Dr. Schulze was the most distinguished—indeed, the only distinguished—physician in Saint X. He was a short, stout, grizzled, spectacled man, with a nose like a scarlet button and a mouth like a buttonhole; in speech he was abrupt, and, on the slightest pretext or no pretext at all, sharp; he hid a warm sympathy for human nature, especially for its weaknesses, behind an uncompromising candor which he regarded as the duty of the man of science toward a vain and deluded race that knew little and learned reluctantly. A man is either better or worse than the manner he chooses for purposes of conciliating or defying the world. Dr. Schulze was better, as much better as his mind was superior to his body. He and his motherless daughters were "not in it" socially. Saint X was not quite certain whether it shunned them or they it. His services were sought only in extremities, partly because he would lie to his patients neither when he knew what ailed them nor when he did not, and partly because he was a militant infidel. He lost no opportunity to attack religion in all its forms; and his two daughters let no opportunity escape to show that they stood with their father, whom they adored, and who had brought them up with his heart. It was Dr. Schulze's furious unbelief, investing him with a certain suggestion of Satan-got intelligence, that attracted Saint X to him in serious illnesses—somewhat as the Christian princes of mediaeval Europe tolerated and believed in the Jew physicians. Saint X was only just reaching the stage at which it could listen to "higher criticism" without dread lest the talk should be interrupted by a bolt from "special Providence"; the fact that Schulze lived on, believing and talking as he did, could be explained only as miraculous and mysterious forbearance in which Satan must somehow have direct part.
"I didn't expect to see you for many a year yet," said Schulze, as Hiram, standing, faced him sitting at his desk.
The master workman grew still more pallid as he heard the thought that weighted him in secret thus put into words. "I have never had a doctor before in my life," said he. "My prescription has been, when you feel badly stop eating and work harder."
"Starve and sweat—none better," said Schulze. "Well, why do you come here to-day?"
"This morning I lifted a rather heavy weight. I've felt a kind of tiredness ever since, and a pain in the lower part of my back—pretty bad. I can't understand it."
"But I can—that's my business. Take off your clothes and stretch yourself on this chair. Call me when you're ready."
Schulze withdrew into what smelled like a laboratory. Hiram could hear him rattling glass against glass and metal, could smell the fumes of